‘Absolute Zero’ is the debut album by Irish quintet, Little Green Cars. ‘Absolute Zero’s’ 48 minutes, crafted in unabashed earnestness with the aid of seasoned epic-producer Markus Dravs (Mumford and Sons’ ‘Sigh No More’ and ‘Babel’, Arcade Fire’s ‘Neon Bible’ and ‘The Suburbs’, Coldplay’s ‘Mylo Xyloto’), acts as a soul-bearing report, as guileless as the young five-piece themselves, on the act of simply growing up; a process that requires, at once, so little and so much effort it could explode you from the inside at any moment.

“This record constantly jumps between two contrasting perspectives: the beauty of a reckless youth and the fear and confusion caused by our ever-pending adulthood,” Appleby explains. “It’s a hopeful and naïve look at love and life in general, which gives the album its bright days — but also deals with isolation, unrequited love and madness. We wanted to express both a feeling of strength and vulnerability, so the work had to encompass both the light and dark.”

On the record’s debut single ‘The John Wayne,’ a fierce paean to the ones who so easily break our hearts, the lot of them proclaim, “It’s easy to fall in love with you/It’s easy to be alone/It’s easy to hate yourself when all your love is inside someone else.” On “My Love Took Me Down To The River To Silence Me,” O’Rourke is torn between the heartbreak and the healing that comes from being heartbroken, “But my heart burned out til it was no more/still I wait on the ground, I don’t know what for/There is a heart in you/where is the heart in me?/This love’s killing me, but I want it to.” And by its early-morning close, when Appleby asks, “And who will write and who will fight for this man/I know I am?/And if you’re running out of space/Please don’t erase your time with me,” it becomes clear that it’s not just love Little Green Cars are grasping at: even amidst an ex-lover’s plea for acknowledgement, the search has grown far beyond that.