Tracksuited, denim and leather clad and hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses, the Cork five-piece, Cardinals, look like they’ve just stepped out of Warhol’s factory in Midtown Manhattan rather than the picturesque village of Kinsale, and yet to live in a Cardinals song is to be surrounded by a grainy, monochromatic landscape that holds both a gritty rock and roll nostalgia and the rolling hills of Ireland’s traditional musical past. Their pogues-leaning, shanty-esque verses swoon into room-filling choruses and often cloak dark and brooding tales of love in gentle first-person conversational narratives.

Cardinals | Bandcamp