Debut albums can sometimes feel like a frantic handshake, a band rushing to introduce themselves before the listener’s attention drifts elsewhere, especially in today’s world of short attention spans. Masquerade doesn’t have that energy at all; Cardinals are unbothered by the scramble around them. There’s no sense of trial and error, no feeling of a group still figuring themselves out in public. After last year’s EP and the steady rise of ‘Twist and Turn’, followed by a deliberate rollout of singles, the band sound settled. This isn’t a first step or a tentative opening move. It’s a bold decision.
That certainty runs through the album’s sound. Cardinals sit on post-punk foundations; there’s grit here, but it’s constantly softened by warmth and openness, and Finn Manning’s accordion is the key to that balance. It isn’t a gimmick or a folk flourish dropped in for texture; it’s structural, shaping the songs from the inside out. Masquerade was recorded without a click track, and you can hear it in the way songs stretch and tighten as they go, rushing when emotion demands it, sagging when restraint feels right. It roughens the edges and keeps things slightly unsteady and incredibly human. As vocalist and guitarist Euan Manning describes it, these are “soft ballads whipped into urgency out of a panicked necessity”, and that push and pull between delicacy and desperation is clearly the album’s driving force.
Ireland hangs over the record without being turned into its only branding. Cork informs the writing, the imagery, and the mood, but the band resist being boxed into a neat regional identity or folded into a ready-made Irish post-punk narrative. It’s not a rejection of where they’re from so much as a refusal to let geography do all of the explanatory work. The references are there if you recognise them (nightlife, history, atmosphere), but they’re never underlined, put in bold or dressed up as proof of their authenticity.
Masquerade is split cleanly in two: the A side is more open and emotionally exposed, the B darker and heavier, trading release for confrontation. What matters is how naturally the two halves speak to each other. The vulnerability introduced early on doesn’t disappear when the guitars get louder, and the opening run makes that clear immediately. ‘She Makes Me Real’ establishes the album’s emotional bluntness, its repeated lyric gaining force through insistence rather than variation. Accordion and drums hold attention before guitars cut through, not to decorate the song but to push it somewhere rougher. ‘St. Agnes’ follows with something more physical and drum-led, driving the record forward rather than easing the listener in. There’s no soft entry point here. Cardinals trust their audience to stay with them.
The album’s emotional core arrives with the title track. ‘Masquerade’ opens outward, leveraged by feeling rather than lyrical density. It’s a reminder that this band doesn’t need to rely on overwriting to impact. The last single ‘I Like You’ pulls things back again; it’s restrained and devastating, one of the strongest moments on the record and the clearest example of Cardinals’ growing confidence as lyricists.
From there, the album leans into its darker stretch; ‘Anhedonia’ drops straight into the action, sharp and immediate, blending punk with anecdotal storytelling rooted in real-world violence. ‘Barbed Wire’ feels restless and wired, shaped by Cork nightlife and literary influence, which is felt in tone rather than quotation. Later, ‘Big Empty Heart’ arrives as a gothic waltz, a love song from beyond the grave that flirts with melodrama but never gives in to it. ‘The Burning of Cork’ takes a different route, folding history into the present and circling the same lines again and again until the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
The album closes with ‘As I Breathe’, written just a week before recording, and it carries that clear sense of urgency with it. Stretching past six minutes, it builds slowly from accordion and voice, the vocals recorded in a stairwell with the ambient noise left intact. It feels exposed and unfinished in the right way, vulnerable without being fragile, perfectly opening the band up for their next steps.
Debut albums often introduce a band; Masquerade does more than that. It defines Cardinals outright. The collaboration feels genuine, the risks feel chosen, and nothing here sounds accidental. This isn’t a band chasing momentum or trying to impress. It’s a band prepared to live with the beautiful consequences of what they’ve made.
Words by Amelia Thompson
