Cardinals

About the show

Wednesday September 16th Cardinals w/ Sex Week \*\*\* "With a scrappy DIY mantra at their heart, Cardinals are the next great band to emerge from Cork's burgeoning music scene. On their debut self-titled EP, released via SoYoung, the Cork group smash through that notion entirely. There’s brooding intensity to be found, but songs like ‘Unreal’ show a softer, more melodic touch that shows they’re a far more kaleidoscopic proposition than that. One thing that does unite them with those bands, however, is that they are a product of Cork’s burgeoning DIY scene. “We put on shows in places where you wouldn’t ordinarily do that and we could capitalise on that,” explains frontman Euan Manning. This scrappy mantra makes it into the EP’s sound, however, and perfectly captures the sound of Cardinals in the here and now." - Nick Reilly, Rolling Stone \*\*\* Sex Week aren’t satisfied. The Brooklyn band’s self-titled debut EP landed in late 2024, and as far as introductions go, set quite the bar. With the playful slowcore of “Toad Mode” and the midnight pop of “Angel Blessings” the band seemed to solidify their spot in the exciting underground of hotly-tipped NYC acts overnight. Press at FADER & Rolling Stone. Playlist covers at Spotify. Airplay on KEXP & KCRW. A US tour on the books for this Spring, and rumblings of international festivals like Green Man on the horizon. “How do we do what we just did, but better,” muses co-vocalist Pearl Amanda Dickson, a relative newcomer to the songwriting world. Sex Week started in 2022 when her now-partner Richard Orofino – a prolific musician & producer since he was in grade school – fell in love with her taste via a wildly eclectic playlist she made for his roommate. If new single “Coat” is any indication, their unique chemistry has somehow propelled them over the bar they set for themselves last year. Time, they learned, is a necessary ingredient on the batch of as-yet-unfinished material this new song is pulled from. “We felt we had a lot more time to live with the songs as we were creating them,” Orofino says. “It totally changed the way they ended up.”