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If you live in the UK there’s a good chance you’ve not heard of Walking On Cars yet. However in Ireland, unless if you’ve been living under the Halfpenny Bridge, there’s simply no way you could have avoided them over the past 12 months.
Their meteoric rise is crowned tonight (Sat, 12 Nov) at Dublin’s Three Arena. They’re certainly no strangers to playing to large crowds in Ireland, but as the frenzied masses assemble this already feels like a step up to the stratosphere.
A huge clock-face is projected to hang in front of the stage and whirs into action to mark the band’s imminent arrival, sparking an overwhelming wall of noise both from and towards the stage. Appropriately, ‘Tick Tock’ whips the young crowd into a state of euphoria and national pride. For this feels like a national event, and Ireland has a new band of heroes in their midst. For their part, the band themselves seem only too ready to take on this mantel and run with it.
There are moments when frontman Patrick Sheehy seems to pause to drink it all in, perhaps imagining what his teenage self would have made about it all, but there’s never any sense that they will be overwhelmed by the sense of occasion. By the time ‘Speeding Cars’, the band’s unofficial anthem, comes around they are lauded from all corners as all-conquering heroes, and you have to say they’ve earned it.
The band count fellow Irish musicians The Script as one of their mentors (and fans). And their sound reflects this, although they often show both a harder edge and a deeper emotional range than their peers. 'Catch Me If You Can' has the kind of epic chorus that makes record executives go weak and the knees; think Editors vs Snow Patrol. And a lush, stripped back cover of 'We Don' Eat' by James Vincent McMorrow packs such a punch the rowdy crowd are stunned almost into silence at times.
From the projected clock-face to huge digital stopwatches used as a backdrop on more than one occasion, time seems to be a big theme of tonight’s show. And this is undeniably Walking On Cars’ time. They have taken Ireland; now they look outwards to take the world. If you live in the UK, there’s a good chance you’ve not heard of Walking On Cars yet. But I guarantee you, in 12 months’ time that will all have changed.
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Walking Cars are on a UK tour now. Check here for more information on their shows that include a headline date at Roundhouse on 13 December.
