Little Green Cars – Absolute Zero (2013)

When I had just moved to London the music world opened up for me in a new way. I was suddenly able to see most of the bands I like live, there were great record shops all over the place and even the small clubs had mostly great concerts with very little money. One of the things I started doing was that I always listened to Rough Trade's albums of the month. Also, Spotify got eventually its Discover Weekly function that I started using to find new bands. Because of all this, I started feeling like the amount of good bands around there was infinite. Little Green Cars is one of those bands that I just accidentally bumped into from one of these channels. I can't remember which one exactly. I first listened to it on Spotify a bit and then I found it in Fopp, one of my favourite record stores in London, with like three pounds, so I bought it. I've really enjoyed the album ever since.



Little Green Cars represents the kind of indie rock style that I was really into in the mid-00's. It's very melodic, there's drama in the sounds and the vocals are interesting. I really like the interplay between the male and female vocals on this album. There are numerous great songs on this album.

The album starts with a super indie sounding song Harper Lee which kicks off with almost Neutral Milk Hotel -like lo-fi sound, but it then explodes into a much more produced part that sounds a lot like The New Pornographers. The following song Angel Owl sounds like the Belgium band Girls In Hawaii or some of the London indie bands like Fanfarlo. My Love Took Me Down to the River to Silence Me really shows the female singer's power for the first time.

Big Red Dragon kind of sounds like Arcade Fire in places and in places it sounds like the more recent albums of Belle and Sebastian. I think it's in order to warn that this song is a real ear worm. Red and Blue is the one song on the album that I really do not like. It's this kind of church hymn sung through a vocoder. I am a purist when it comes to singing. I want to hear human vocals that sound like human vocals. The John Wayne is the surprise treat on the album. The way the song starts is not necessarily that interesting, but when it finally kicks off in double tempo, it becomes one of the most powerful songs on the album. The album finishes with a beautifully endearing song Goodbye Blue Monday. This song shows how great it is to leave sounds raw every once in a while. This song wouldn't be half as powerful if it would be produced up to the max.

Me and my wife like to, every once in a while, play music videos from Youtube by taking turns. I played Little Green Cars' The John Wayne once when I had just been listening to them quite a lot and it turns out that it actually has a great music video. It has this great modern building in the middle of the forest. Visually it looks amazing.

In recent years, I have found out about some fantastic Irish bands, such as The Young Folk and Little Green Cars. This gives me much hope in the future of Irish bands. For a while there I thought that one of the great English speaking countries was doing not so great in popular music, but these kinds of bands have changed my view. Little Green Cars is definitely one of the new bands that I will continue playing in the years to come.

Listen to the album on Spotify.