The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Cardinals’ debut album is a reminder that sometimes more is more.1
Any elder millennial red-and-white pilled at an early age by the White Stripes knows that two people can make a pleasing racket, and the power trio remains an evocative archetype of rock music’s essential vigor for good reason.2 However, there’s something fundamentally grand and special about a band with a more expansive lineup making the most of their numerical advantage.
Guitar music made by a larger group — be they multitudinous Canadians, masked Iowans or manic scenesters from a Welsh art school — invites the listener in.3 It’s the same buzz you can catch from a good live show put on wax. It’s an opportunity to feel feelings in a way that’s simultaneously empathetic, vicarious and voyeuristic. It’s a chance to abandon individualized inhibitions and surrender to the humid collective catharsis of the group, to bear witness and be witnessed while rocking out.
Such bands also sound different in a literal sense, as they often prominently feature sounds that other groups cannot attempt or would have to import. Many acts will trot out choral vocals, strings, brass, woodwinds, or varied percussion for a song or two, but larger bands have the capacity to make complex harmonies, weaving guitar, glockenspiel, turntables, violin, or whatever else a calling card.
Cardinals, formerly a sextet and now a five-piece band from Cork, Ireland, don’t quite have as much roster depth as some of the previously alluded to bands.4 But their personnel is robust enough to account for a fairly boilerplate singer-guitarist (Euan Manning), guitarist (Oskar Gudinovic), bassist (Aaron Hurley), drummer (Darragh Manning) lineup, and a crucial something extra. Cardinals’ X-factor throughout Masquerade is accordionist (Finn Manning).5
In the wrong hands, an omnipresent squeeze box could be a tacky gimmick or downright hellish. In Finn Manning’s hands, the accordion is noticeable but not overpowering. It both complements and improves the more standard rock instrumentation, adding a rich droning texture to what is otherwise a fine collection of sadboy rock songs. Each track has a warm, welcoming, hearth that the guitar, bass and drums can mingle around. It’s a lovely effect and helps mark Masquerade as one of the best debuts of the young year, and one of 2026’s most enjoyable albums overall.
That means the Cardinals who don’t play the accordion pull their weight, too. There’s just less of an obvious hook.
Cardinals have obviously heard, loved and metabolized a lot of cool music. Jangle rockers from Manchester and Athens, anthemic Britpop and the Pogues are all part of the equation. Sometimes the inspiration is noticeably direct, like on Masquerade‘s title track, which has a swaying low end redolent of “Dear Prudence.” Which classic version served as a touchstone is in the ear of the beholder, but it’s easy to hear the woozy throb of McCartney’s bassline. “Barbed Wire” was struck by a stray bolt of desert-rock heat lightning courtesy of Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows.” Lyrics that reference alcohol and ecstasy make the connection to the desert rock no-goodniks especially explicit. It’s a bit derivative, but there are worse things for a young band to be, especially when the band in question has good taste and plays well.
Cardinals clear both hurdles.
Euan Manning delivers vocals that communicate a beleaguered perseverance, whether the woe endured is an empty pint glass or a Black and Tan terror attack. Hurley’s bass playing is both load-bearing and springy. It shines as a steady counterbalance to accordion-fueled mania, like on “Ahnedonia,” and as a tone-setter for the restless bob of “Big Empty Heart.” Guidinovic isn’t tasked with anything too flashy, but he plays nicely with both another guitar and an accordion, which has to be harder than it sounds. He also dishes out an appropriately incendiary solo on “The Burning of Cork.” Darragh Manning has a strong case to be the album’s co-MVP. He’s a nervy drummer with a penchant for cross-stick playing that injects an indespensible anxious edge to songs. The parts are all solid or better, and their sum is greater.
Masquerade is a short album. It consists of just 10 songs, most with run times between two and three minutes. However, in a bit of tried-and-true sequencing, it closes with its longest song, “As I Breathe.” It’s a restrained, contemplative, six-minute-long song that grapples with faith and ache. Its first half is built around an accordion wheeze that rises and falls like human respiration. As its second half unspools, “As I Breathe” slowly gathers momentum. Drums pound with a newfound sense of urgency, spindly guitar floats to the surface of the mix, and hi-hats tremble. Everything seems to signal an album-closing eruption of howling post-rock noise. Instead, a gentle whooshing sound becomes the soundfield’s dominant presence. It’s a headwind against a slow glide over the world’s edge that reverts “As I Breathe” to its sleepy status quo. After an album of reasonably obvious choices, it’s both an interesting, pretty anticlimax and a bit of a letdown.
It’s nice to hear Cardinals buck convention and stretch their sound on Masquerade‘s final track, but it would be even more fun to hear them really try to fly. Hopefully, their second album further delivers on that promise.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
The Kids In The Hall, Season Five, Episode Six
“I’m about this close to kicking the crap outta you.”
“Oh yeah? Well I’m about this close… to running away.”
“A real women’s libber, eh? Ms Macbeth.”
“I’m sorry, sir, don’t fire me.”
“I’ve gone mad with my moderate amount of power!”
McKinney picking up an arrow and then the camera turning to McCullough made me laugh.
“Hey! Are you trying to buy my dirty underwear?”
“Jesus, I hate guys with brains!”
“You are a good worker. You are a better worker when you work in silence.”
That final dialogue between the two guys shoveling coal feels like one of those moments where the crew wants to make something vaguely serious.
The Secret Agent – another winner from Kleber Mendonça Filho, I’ve enjoyed his three previous films enough that I feel like he might make something that completely blows me away at some point and I had a little hope this might be the one, but I’m not too disappointed that it just ended up in a similar “really quite excellent” zone to his other work. Loved the way it patiently reveals what’s actually going on, but has easily enough retro Brazilian hang-out vibes to make the wait pleasurable. I thought it had a bit of an Elmore Leonard vibe, due to the period and the presence of many scumbags. I’d heard beforehand that it might not deliver a tidy ending and that is indeed the case, it left me slightly unsatisfied but in a way that kept me thinking. Great to see Udo Kier pop up again after his strong showing in Bacurau and this is also a cat movie, albeit a pretty weird one.
The film gets even better on a 2nd viewing, not just for appreciating the amazing music cues, but getting more into the historical context of “a period of great mischief.” The ending I think is extremely powerful; scroll down through this interview (of course, spoilers), for an interpretation of the final scene: https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/wagner-moura-kleber-mendonca-filho-interview-the-secret-agent/
It was rainy and/or snowing here so:
A Star Is Born (1954) – Incredible movie with, flat out, some of the best color images I’ve seen in a film pre-1960, with two decidedly unnaturalistic performances from Mason and Garland that circle all the way around back to naturalistic in the way that people feeling huge emotions DO become big in their reactions and expressions. Both actors go for the throat, their own often tormented personal lives haunting the picture and the performances. (I didn’t expect to be crying for almost the entire last hour.) The screenplay and direction throughout threads this line, as Nikita noticed as well, of moving in between artifice and realism, performance and privacy, the often heartless studio system process of industrialized filmmaking and movie magic. You get the near-surreal “Box” number famously not directed by Cukor as well as Mason near the end already looking like a corpse, no longer the lead but the stiff. What a picture.
The Pitt S2E7 – Not as unified an episode as the last one, still good, with Robby at his best and worst (giving Mel a pep talk and being honest with Langdon at the worst possible moment for the young doc). Loved the body stuff here of Abbott and Robby doing a tracheotomy by inserting what looked like a disinfecting device. The CEO appearing in the hospital in a tennis shirt and shorts is hilarious – wow, bosses really have so many responsibilities – and the cliffhanger here promises more calumny for the Pitt.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms finale was very good and that last pre-credits image has a lovely magical quality to it. Where you go, the dead cannot follow, but they can ride elsewhere, never truly disappearing. If there’s any show that functions as a critique of it’s other franchise entries, it’s this one: the others can’t create images this truly meaningful and mystical.
Inside No. 9, “Lip Service”
Pemberton has the starring role here as a man who hires a lip reader from a PI firm (Sian Clifford) to visually eavesdrop on his wife, who’s having a meeting in the hotel across from his. Of course, much is not as it seems, and the episode’s turns towards both eccentrically shabby romantic comedy (two lonely, messed-up people with boundary issues finding love) and the ‘70s conspiracy thriller that suits the production design are both gripping and well-executed. Clifford is fantastic and very versatile here as well. Clever comedy, drama, and staging bit all in one when her character is lip-reading the unheard half of Pemberton’s phone call from across the street—filling us in, worsening his agitation, and adding to the pathos—while we get the other side of it from him.
Taskmaster, “Is That Number Got Curves?”
“No one will learn anything for the next hour, so crack open a can and give in to the pointlessness!”
“Oh, that was a bad edit, wasn’t it?”
“I try to look on the bright side of life and just enjoy every second.”
“He said that like there’s someone with a gun at his head.”
“Let’s begin with Phil, short for Philip, and Ania, short for genetic reasons.”
“I don’t know how long you’ve got left.”
“Well, none of us do, don’t we, but isn’t that life’s big question?”
“My work here is done. Never again will you steal cream eggs from Asda.”
“I’d like for the first time in this series to drill down into the narrative somewhat.”
“That’s what he wants.”
“He?”
“Greg. Davies. … He’s the Taskmaster.”
“I was born Sanjeev, which I remain to this day.”
“Maisie, you wrote, ‘He keeps explaining the plot of the show I’m in.’”
“He’s only here because he breathed through a Monster Munch foot.”
“I didn’t finish the previous sentence which you took as a compliment ….”
“Cats the musical was a big thing in your life, right? Were you in it, or—”
“I watched it.”
“The thing is, Alex, there is no right or wrong.”
“Is that right?”
“Don’t confuse me.”
“Why go for a nice lunch when you can make a chopstick ladder?”
“And not deviate from the path.”
“There’s a lot of rules here, Alex. Like, have a day off, y’know what I mean?”
“God, it was bold, though!”
Task ownage: Sanjeev’s “eggistentialism,” where the initial low-key and comedic failure actually turned out to be only the iceberg tip of something way more elaborate and impressive—which also partly failed, but in a way that correctly netted him the most points. Reece going full Vincent Price in his “Pit and the Pendulum” short film. The surprisingly good miming of Phil, Ania, and Sanjeev.
Off-task but still ownage: Ania’s incredibly accurate internal clock.
Miss Marple, “At Bertram’s Hotel,” part two – Turns out that the reason the hotel seems like a pose it that it is! It’s really the secret headquarters for a criminal group that…frankly, I am not entirely sure what it does, but it did rob the Irish mail train! Oh, and there is a murder that is only loosely connected to things. But it’s enjoyable enough, in part because the Scotland Yard inspector she works with is a bit of an eccentric as well and likes working with her. But not a strong plot at all.
The Practice, “The Cradle Will Rock” – Christian Scientists are charged with murder when they choose prayer over medical science for their sick son. And when they make it clear they think they did nothing wrong, the plea agreement is rejected by Judge Kittleson, perhaps unfairly, but we need the plot, don’t we? And to make matters worse, the wife is expecting and Helen and her boss decide to file papers to protect the unborn child from the mother since the first kid (the one who died) had a rough birth. And boy Helen’s boss is in no shape to handle this case. As a legal case, it’s somewhat interesting, and I think Kelley really tries not to judge Christian Scientists, but at the same time they are found guilty and Eugene’s post-9/11 argument of “all weird religions are being persecuted” rings badly. (Worth nothing, BTW, that 34 states have cut-outs to prevent Christian Scientists who do things like this form being prosecuted. Massachusetts is not one of them.) In terms of the characters, this is it for Bill Smitrovich as DA Walsh, and I suspect by now he was ready to go. Meanwhile, Lindsay decides she is not ready to return to the firm, and starts her own one woman office next door, and still seems like she needs therapy. What is up with any of this?
MASH, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” – An accident leaves Hawkeye temporarily blinded, and scared, but also oddly liberated. We get very close to the cliche of “your other senses work better” (which as Deanna Troi later asserted is not true), but we never get there, and just get a Hawkeye who discovers what he was missing. And who also helps take Frank down when he learns our favorite ferret face is listening to ballgames at night and then placing bets before the daytime rebroadcast. Tom Sullivan, a blind actor/singer and TV regular in the 70s, plays a soldier who is not as lucky as Hawkeye. The first MASH screenplay by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, who would go on to write as a team for Cheers, The Simpsons, and Frasier among other shows. The baseball element here foreshadows Levine’s other career as a baseball announcer.
Frasier, “Tales from the Crypt” – Upset by a Halloween prank from Bulldog, Frasier plans an elaborate but seemingly not very funny response. But things are not what they seem. Some very clever twists here as for once Frasier realizes he’s not much of a prankster. Meanwhile, Daphne’s mom and a kid from their building get into a les interesting prank war. Oh, and there is a throwaway line about Frasier taking a rake to the beach. Sideshow Bob fans no doubt winced at this.
What did we listen to?
Well, February’s almost finished, and my list of new radio tunes for 2026 (including releases late enough in 2025 to be counted) is up to 75. Now, I don’t think they’ll all end up being favorites – maybe a third of them will merit consideration for the year in review* – but it’s still a lot. I love music, but at this rate I feel like I’m never gonna write any words about it or TV ever again.
(* – including the subject of today’s column.)
Been listening to (and playing) a lot of folky guitar shit, John Fahey, Bert Jansch, Robbie Basho, Gwenifer Raymond, M. Haiux. My February songwriting output has been at an extreme low ebb but I’m enjoying dicking around with alternate tunings and might record a few more instrumentals this week.
Most of the way through the Screen Drafts Linklater / Hawke episode, made me keen to catch up with Blue Moon, also surprised that Tape is doing so well.
What alternate tunings are you using, if you don’t mind me asking?
Just DADGAD at the moment, although if I start running out of ideas I might change it up again. I’ve also borrowed a banjo, and since I’ve never played one before the open G there FEELS like an alternate tuning even if it’s the banjo standard…
I’ve been using open D: DADF#AD. Using harmonics in that tuning sounds really cool.
Isaac Hayes’ Black Moses album, excellent 70’s funk of course. Man had quite a run in the Seventies and that doesn’t even include his credits on some great 60’s soul hits.
I’m still learning piano and will be taking my fifth lesson tomorrow! Already trying to learn on my own too apart from the 12 bar blues my friend and teacher taught me – “Ode to Joy” I am cribbing off a kids’ lesson page, but I’m enjoying the sheer process of figuring out the notes and turns for these songs. Definitely where my creative process is going these days. Also tried to learn “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” or I should awkwardly stammer it out – turns out, Sondheim is really, really, really hard to play. At least I figured out the F minor and F major tricks here, which do sound like a person stalking you, creating this constant unresolved tension in the music up until the Dies Irae chorus and the sheer diabolical sound of Sweeney’s entrance.
Keith Phipps’s very low key Laser Age podcast is back, but now it’s doing themes for five weeks and sort of ignoring the Laser Age. At 25 minutes, it’s the anti-Blank Check, but Phipps – who I really like as a critic in written form – is just not a great podcaster. The first film up was Them!, and as much as it’s the start of the American atomic monster trend, it’s not really much to dissect (so to speak).
Might catch up on a few of those episodes but as you say, it’s not super engaging. A decent low-key listen as I don’t know a ton about older 20th century sci-fi films.