Features Track By Track: Little Green Cars - Absolute Zero

’ ‘Absolute Zero’ is an album full of wild ideas running amok. Its songwriting doesn’t come from the usual sources, either, which is all part of its appeal. The Dublin band bring in characters - all conjured up from the most unhinged of imaginations - to help place these ideas in context. Spanning from excitable to downright miserable, this half-autobiographical, half-fantastical debut’s already topped charts in Ireland and it’s easy to see why. Stevie Appleby and Faye O’ Rourke constantly charm, snatching rotten darkness from its lowest point and giving it a triumphant new slant. The two explained the concepts behind their first work by answering DIY’s questions about each individual track.

DIY also has an exclusive stream of ‘Absolute Zero’ - play below and read all about Stevie and Faye’s take on the record.



How much does literature have an impact on your songwriting? What it is about Harper Lee’s work that ties into this song, and the title?
Literature has always had a big impact on all of our writing. I never liked school so books were my window to the rest of the world. The song itself is written from the perspective of a very passive and non violent person being pushed to the edge of his sanity by the people around him. The sentiment in the song seemed to correspond with the book To Kill A Mockingbird because I felt that the main character of the song was himself a mockingbird, and it’s a sin to kill him because he doesn’t do anyone any harm.

Could you tell us more about the subject of ‘Angel Owl’? She seems to be described as quite a destructive character.
I wrote this song when I was very sick and I had to spend my first night in hospital alone. There was a big storm that night and I was kept awake by the sounds of the ward. People were moaning and nurses where running around and the moon was shining in my window. I started to get really scared so I decided to invent my own patron saint whose job it would be to keep me safe. Then from outside my window I heard a ‘hoot hoot’ and decided that it was my very own angel owl.

‘My Love Took Me Down To The River To Silence Me’ kicks in from the off with vocal harmonies - what is it about this song that serves such an immediate purpose?
Faye: I think the sort of plain chant style harmonies that open the song are very arresting. I’d like to think its a very unusual opener and one that hasn’t really been done before. It also addresses the most curious lyrics that arouse interest, I suppose. People seem to be very curious about the title and are always asking about the meaning behind it. I also wanted to get people’s attention at the start of the vocal performance willing or not.
I like to think that the song as a whole serves an important purpose, for me anyway in that I wanted to address the whole adolescence thing in a more serious light. I think the greatest challenge for me was losing the ability as a child to recover quickly from upset. As a teenager feelings of upset and doubt linger far longer, its quite frustrating trying to shake stuff off. I obviously dramatised it but I think you get the idea.

Could you talk us through the subject of ‘The Consequences Of Not Sleeping? It appears to be about intimacy, needing one individual so much that you rely on them…
Yeah I guess that’s true. It’s a sort of selfish love, or a love that you burden someone with through a lack of love for yourself. That’s just the sort of love or non love that keeps you awake at night.

‘Big Red Dragon’ sounds like the biggest, most starry-eyed track on the record - how did it come together?
This song was a funny one. It’s a very manic song and it was written in a manic way. I remember belting it out on my guitar and it sounded ok, but at the same time it was completely out of tune. I couldn’t figure out why. The chords were right but all the strings kept buzzing all out of key but in my mind it sounded great! Then when I showed it to the band, I think everyone was a little apprehensive until Adam figured out that I just needed to put a capo on the third fret. After that, it all came together pretty quick.

‘Red and Blue’ is a really surprising turn. How did you go about recording the organ sounds, and why did you opt for the use of vocoder?
I wrote the song at a time when I had really bad writer’s block, so I decided to invent a character to write the song for me. The character I came up with was the lonely robot from Mars. He’d fallen in love with this girl who was so beautiful that he built the world to the sound of her name as a gift. But when she went down to Earth to see her present she never came back, and so the lonely robot from Mars is still up there waiting for her. I was working off the idea can art be better then the artist. I just thought the vocoder sounded like a robot.

Would you agree that this is the most downbeat song on the record? Could you explain the subject of ‘The Kitchen Floor’?
Faye: I suppose in terms of tempo and the combination of lyrics I would agree with you. But I think that the album is laced with downtrodden themes that have had a bit of a make-over over the course of time, but this song hasn’t been as fortunate. Yes it’s quite a hard hitting song lyrically and it’s addressing things that people would try to blank out in some respects, I guess. I was trying to deal with alcoholism in families from a young child’s perspective and restricting romantic relationships as well. The feeling of talking people to death with your own issues and their eventual dismissal of them.

It’s about one thing and 100 things really. My mind was in 1000 different places when I was writing the song. I almost felt I had so much to say and not enough words to describe what I needed to describe. It was like having a stammer in my head, in a sense. It was like trying to squash a fly that keeps escaping your hand and gets you more and more frustrated the longer it eludes you.

It’s easy to picture ‘The John Wayne’ song with big festival crowds, clapping hands in unison. Do you ever imagine where your songs will end up when you’re writing them?
It’s funny - I never considered this song a happy song. It’s about unrequited love and brutal rejection and the comparison between the harshness of modern love and the ruthlessness of the wild west. I always laugh when I see people sing and jump to it because i think to myself, ‘if only they knew’.

You use quite fantastical imagery in ‘Please’ - does the imagination often run riot when you’re writing?
Faye: Well, my imagination can be quite eccentric at the best of times and can often run away with me if I’m home alone at night time. Usually during the songwriting process on the other hand it’s a little more regimented. I usually have one lyric that the song revolves around - I have imagery that comes to mind in line with what I’m trying to express, so it only really works as and aid I guess. It doesn’t go off in tangents too much. All the imagery in that song came to mind very quickly and I knew exactly what I was trying to get across. The whole cutting knees thing and the pretending that someone is there when they’re not was just a way of shocking people into understanding or relating to what I was feeling. I like slightly sinister imagery and things that have double meanings. I like messing with people so they’re curious.

Do ‘Please’ and ‘Them’ act as a pair on this record? The short titles, grand musicianship suggest they do…
I guess they do, now that I think about it. But it wasn’t intentional. That’s the great thing about having both a boy and girl perspective in the songwriting. Usually me and Faye end up looking at the same subjects just because I guess we both somewhat live the same life. But we both see things differently sometimes. It’s like we’re looking at the same view but just from two different windows.

‘Goodbye Blue Monday’ is arguably the simplest, most intimate song on the record - is that why you chose it as a closer, and how did you go about writing it?
Yeah, we all just felt that it sort of summed up the whole record. I wrote the song in one sitting but it really took a year to write. It’s a sort of goodbye to adolescence, like a suicide note that your old life would write to the new one. I can’t decide whether it’s positive or negative but it’s definitely not a sad song - it was a kind of victory.

Little Green Cars’ ‘Absolute Zero’ is released on 19th August. Pre-order here.