Little Green Cars - Absolute Zero '2013

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Harper Lee
02. Angel Owl
03. My Love Took Me Down To the River To Silence Me
04. The Consequences of Not Sleeping
05. Big Red Dragon
06. Red and Blue
07. The Kitchen Floor
08. The John Wayne
09. Please
10. Them
11. Goodbye Blue Monday


Harper Lee, the alternately bloody and bucolic leadoff cut on Irish indie folk
collective Little Green Cars Glassnote debut, may not deal directly with the To
Kill a Mockingbird author from whom it derives its name, but its fevered
protagonist, who repeatedly intones Theres a gun in the attic/Let me go grab
it/Id blow holes in my soul just so you could look past it, echoes the loss of
innocence at the heart of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story. Its a theme that
obviously resonates with the group, whose members are barely in their twenties,
but for each pounding of fists against the injustices of adulthood, theres a
roar of pure, youthful joy, albeit tempered with the resigned bleat of
heartache. The past is still too raw and relatively close to devolve completely
into nostalgia, but co-lead vocalist Steven Applebys throaty, emotive croon
sounds as sentimental as it does world-weary, and it casts a wistful patina over
otherwise stadium-ready songs like the aforementioned Lee and Big Red Dragon,
the latter of which benefits greatly from Arcade Fire/Coldplay/Mumford & Sons
producer Markus Dravs expansive knob twiddling. Absolute Zero switches gears
when guitarist/vocalist Faye ORourke takes the helm, especially on the
evocative, gospel-tinged My Love Took Me Down to the River to Silence Me,
shifting from earthy, Frightened Rabbit/Band of Horses-inspired introspection to
soulful, full-on Florence + the Machine/Anna Calvi-infused bombast, but Appleby
and ORourke manage to complement each other more times than not, resulting in a
kind of Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac-meets Lady Antebellum style of
gender juggling, Americana-kissed indie pop that seems ripe for the radio. In
fact, the only real misstep on the extremely likable Absolute Zero is the
forgettable Red and Blue, a perfectly good song thats ruined by an oppressive
(and dated) amount of Auto-Tune, a gimmick that should never be wasted on people
who can actually sing.

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