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Cardinals Bring Their Rising Guitar Sound to Electric Ballroom London
Cardinals are heading to London for a night that feels like a marker for one of guitar music’s most talked-about new bands. The Irish five-piece from Cork have built their name the old-fashioned way — through sharp, guitar-led songs and shows that have turned heads well beyond Ireland — and a headline date at the Electric Ballroom puts them in front of a London crowd at exactly the right moment. For a band still early in their story, this is the kind of room that can turn a growing following into something bigger.
Cardinals will play the Electric Ballroom in London, UK, on Thursday, November 12, 2026. The Camden venue, one of the capital’s best-known live rooms, is a fitting stage for a band whose rise has been driven by the strength of their songs and the energy of their live performances. The date comes as Cardinals continue to build on the momentum of the past two years, when they became one of the most talked about new guitar bands around.
Fans at the Electric Ballroom can expect a night built around Cardinals’ direct, guitar-driven sound, with songs including “Roseland” and “Unreal” among the material that has brought the Cork band to wider attention. Those songs show the two sides of the band at their best: melody and urgency delivered with the confidence of a group that knows exactly what it wants to sound like. In a room the size of the Electric Ballroom, that sound should land with real force.
It is a show to catch while Cardinals are still on the rise — a London headline that captures a band in motion, playing songs that already feel built for rooms like this one.
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Darren Jessee has been the drummer behind Ben Folds Five and the songwriter behind Hotel Lights, and his new single sounds like a man deciding not to put the pen down. “Shoulder Season,” recorded by Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman, previews a forthcoming solo album due in 2027.
North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Darren Jessee (Ben Folds Five, Hotel Lights) is proud to present “Shoulder Season,” the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist’s brand new single lifted from his forthcoming solo album that will see a 2027 release. Recorded by GRAMMY-winning musician and producer Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman and mixed by Peter Katis (The National, Kurt Vile), “Shoulder Season” traces the paths people chart in and around our lives over the years. The track also invites close listening, which in turn draws attention to Jessee’s evocative lyrics as well as the nuanced instrumental performances he and Kaufman captured on tape. “‘Shoulder Season’ … I liked the words by themselves,” Jessee says. “They suggest perseverance and resilience during a season of time. The term shoulder season means a transitional time of year.” Watch the music video for “Shoulder Season” on YouTube.
Darren Jessee was in a period of personal upheaval. His mother had recently passed away after a short illness. He was also touring as a drummer for the Americana act Chatham County Line, a gig that he enjoyed but one that kept him from performing much as a solo artist. And then his label rep at Bar/None, home of Jessee’s last seven albums, retired. In the wake of it all, Jessee found himself wondering if it was perhaps time to set aside the burden of managing a songwriting career and simply lean into his work as a drummer. “But then I just kept finding these songs and enjoying them,” he says of his forthcoming solo showcase that symbolizes a new beginning for the veteran musician — an organic, hushed and transcendent sound very much inspired by the blizzard that the album was recorded in.
Stay tuned for more music and information on Darren Jessee’s forthcoming solo album to be announced in the coming weeks. Jessee will be making the following appearances in November:
November 12 — Wake Forest, NC — Wake Forest Listening Room
November 18 — Greensboro, NC — Flat Iron (with Natalie Jane Hill)
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