Little Green Cars on the highway to fame

At a recent Little Green Cars gig at Cork Opera House, co-vocalist Stevie Appleby recited a poem about a boy with a rhino’s horn who accidently killed his mother when she tried to smother him out of embarrassment.

That he could interrupt their performance to do so is testament to just how far the five piece have come in so short a space of time.

The crowd, after some shushing, hang on his every word, laughing in all the right places. Appleby and his band seemed immeasurably comfortable on a stage that would prove too big for many other Irish groups with only one album to their name.

But Little Green Cars, all in their early 20s and friends since school, also have more experience than most, with 2013 proving to be their breakout year: They released debut album Absolute Zero and toured the US four times, as well as playing festivals near and far, culminating in a sellout Irish tour in December.

Singer Faye O’Rourke admits that where they used to be naive, the last 12 months have toughened them, both as people and as musicians. “Obviously there’s a certain amount of politics,” she says. “The sad thing about it is in everything that we do there’s politics and you have to play a game. There’s a lot of compromise involved. If you sign yourself to something, you have to play the game in terms of, things might not always go your way.”

But O’Rourke says the good does outweigh the bad. “You do get a certain gratification, justification, of what you’re doing when you get to see these places, go to these places and have x amount of people at your gig. Certainly it does balance out the cons of, not being told what to do, but being pushed in one direction or the other.”

Of the “non-stop” touring last year, O’Rourke admits she did find it difficult, at least initially. “I remember when we went to America and the first night; I just bawled my eyes out crying. I was excited to be away but it was just this feeling of isolation and it was just, ‘oh this is what my life’s going to be like for the next year, this kinda thing’.”

She adds, matter of factly, that “I just started to grow to really love it. It just got easier.”

Completed by Adam O’Regan, Donagh Seaver O’Leary, and Dylan Lynch, the band had been holed up in Wexford for six weeks prior to the Opera House show, working on new songs. Of the new songs aired in Cork, ‘Easier Day’ sounds biggest, a positive track that you can imagine connecting with thousands of forlorn teenagers.

“I think it’s always a challenge to write something a bit more upbeat and happier for us just in terms of our tastes,” O’Rourke says. “I love chart music anyway, all kinds of crap; I love it, but actually writing something upbeat is difficult. But there’s definitely a continuation of deep lyrical content and a melancholy theme, but there’s also a little bit less naivety, the stuff we’re going on with.”

Don’t bet on Little Green Cars stalling anytime soon.