Cardinals announce long-awaited debut album ‘Masquerade’ with vulnerable title track

Cardinals have announced their debut album ‘Masquerade’ and shared its vulnerable title track – listen here.

• Read More: Cardinals: the Cork indie band set on writing future classics

The Cork five-piece’s first LP is set to arrive on February 13 on So Young Records, following June’s single ‘Big Empty Heart’, the only one of the band’s previous singles to make the album.

The album, which you can pre-order here, is described as shifting from “the brittle honesty of folk to the theatrical melodrama of goth-rock” throughout.

“Something the record looks at is peeling back the ‘masquerade’ or the facade we all put up,” said frontman Euan Manning. “The curtain is pulled and cynicism takes its place – it’s really easy to be cynical and far harder to be hopeful and genuine.

“We’ve learnt this through playing and touring but you can’t be a total cynic if you’re making music or films or whatever it is, making art forces you to dig deeper than that protective layer. Stripping it back is painful, you can find things you’re really not proud of but it also lends itself to a sort of acceptance that can’t be attained if you don’t allow yourself that vulnerability. A lot of the themes and ideas in the album come from that place.”

He described the tender ‘Masquerade’ as the “broadest exploration of that”, explaining: “It’s definitely one of the more intimate moments on the album. The vulnerability it reveals is uncomfortable and that’s where we wanted to be when we were writing the songs on the record.”

‘Masquerade’ will be released on all physical formats, as well as a Rough Trade exclusive Galaxy vinyl. Cassettes will be available exclusively via the band’s store.

The ‘Masquerade’ tracklist is: 

1. ‘She Makes Me Real’
2. ‘St. Agnes’
3. ‘Masquerade’
4. ‘I Like You’
5. ‘Over At Last’
6. ‘Anhedonia’ 
7. ‘Barbed Wire’
8. ‘Big Empty Heart’
9. ‘The Burning Of Cork’
10. ‘As I Breathe’

After supporting the likes of Fontaines D.C., Wunderhorse and The Pogues over the last couple of months, Cardinals will be headlining the So Young tour with Mên An Tol and Pebbledash later this month. They’re then set to head off on a European headline tour in November.

NME named Cardinals in the NME 100 list of essential emerging artists for 2025, writing: “Take The Strokes’ knack for a laissez-faire indie hook, a little bit of honey-drizzled shoegaze, some new wave grace, a whole lot of Irish spirit and chuck in an accordion for good measure and you’ve got the punky sun-kissed romance of this Cork five-piece: the Class Of 2025’s ‘most likely to do a Fontaines and get massive’.

Last year, Manning told NME that he wanted the band to make a “classic Cork album”. He added: “I think you want to be out of your comfort zone as much as you can. I’d hate to think that we’ve become lax and settled into something. It’s good to have a sound, obviously, but we want to keep pushing forward. There’s a whole spectrum of feeling – and I want to capture that.”

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