“When Little Green Cars were deciding on a title for their extraordinary second album, they discovered a poem that captured exactly what they were after. That poem is called Ephemera, and as soon as singer Stevie Appleby read it to his band mates, the album was too.

“It’s a transitional album,” says Stevie. “Lyrically, it’s all about change – the end of some eras, new beginnings, learning from the past and looking to the future. Ephemera means things that are important to you, but only for a short time. That could apply to music or relationships or even a particular day. The poem sums up the theme of the album, which we only realised ourselves when we’d recorded the songs.””

Two deaths, relationship break-ups and over two years spent touring the band’s widely-acclaimed 2013 debut Absolute Zero are among the key events that inform Ephemera’s richly-textured, harmony-soaked rock songs. While the impact of those events will change over time, the intense emotions they evoked will live on in the music.

“It’s an album that wants to be important to people,” explains Appleby. “Importance can fade but the feelings should stay. Say you adore a song at 16 because it expresses exactly how you’re feeling. Hopefully, the song won’t always mean that much because you’ll move on, but hearing it should bring those feelings back.”

Little Green Cars are five former school friends from Dublin who were still in their teens when they were spotted and signed to Glassnote and recorded Absolute Zero with producer Markus Dravs. That album changed their lives, taking them on tour everywhere from Europe and Australia to Russia and the States, which they criss-crossed six times in three years.

Now all in their early 20s, Little Green Cars are both a different band and the same five friends who met every Sunday aged 15 in Stevie’s garden shed to start writing songs. Those changes, their shared experiences and individual ups and downs are candidly documented in Ephemera, a gorgeous, grown-up album about, well, growing up.

In countless ways, Little Green Cars have changed. They’ve moved on, not just from the kids who made the startlingly assured Absolute Zero. In truth, they’ve already moved on from the people they were when they wrote Ephemera. But singing those songs on stage, as they will for heaven knows how long, will remind them – and their fans – of the hand life deals you and how you deal with it.