We live in a curious Pop music era. Bands can go from playing small rooms one day to massive festivals the next — then back to the clubs again just as quickly. Case in point: Little Green Cars’ buzzed-about 2013 debut, Absolute Zero, drew invitations for the Irish Indie Rock fivesome to play such profile-broadening venues as South by Southwest, Coachella and Lollapalooza just months after the album’s release. Yet when the band’s follow-up, the recently released Ephemera, was played at a recent house party I attended, not one of the 20 or so largely musically savvy attendees had ever heard of the band.
While that’s admittedly not the most scientific of polls — and three years between albums can be an eternity in today’s fast-paced environment — it’s hard to argue that it’s not another sign of a fractured cultural landscape in which promising bands can get lost in the shuffle. Which, in the case of Little Green Cars, would be a shame — Ephemera is a diverse, harmony-driven affair in which melancholic, Fleet Foxes-esque Folk Pop comingles with more sonically dramatic fare that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Florence + the Machine record.
“Everyone talks about the difficult second record, but for us it was the dreaded first record,” singer and guitarist Stevie Appleby said in a recent interview with Moo Kid Music about the band’s growth from one album to the next. “That’s your introduction to the world, and that impression is gonna be really long-lasting and how everyone is gonna perceive you. With this record we’re a lot more confident.”
Click here for tickets/more info.