Over the last four years, Lime Garden have been bubbling under as one of the country’s best new indie bands. Each new single released found them moving forward, expanding their sound and honing their sardonic lyricism while they lit up venues and festival stages each time they stepped out under the lights. Now, their debut album ‘One More Thing’ brings their journey so far to a boil in spectacular form.
Their existence as a band – one with DIY in its veins and still having to work 9 to 5s to fund their music – feeds into this refreshing record, but the four-piece manage to keep things relatable throughout. On ‘Pop Star’, they despair about the grind, poking fun at themselves and their dreams. “I don’t wanna work my job / Cos life is fleeting, and I’m a pop star,” singer and guitarist Chloe Howard drawls. ‘Pine’, a more melancholy, downcast cut, finds the Brighton-based band lamenting: “Everybody wants to make it, yet no one seems to try / Scared of being forgotten or scared to cry.”
Lime Garden’s concerns will strike a chord with anyone who’s imagined a particular life for themselves and had to push on through the clouds of panic that it might never come to fruition. “I fear the feeling of failure,” Howard admits on ‘Fears’. “I fear the thought of some success.” As she sings, Leila Deeley’s buzzing guitar mimics the tension and anxieties that course through her words.
‘One More Thing’ isn’t just an ode to what could be or what might slip through your fingers. It’s also fuelled by obsession and a variety of female relationships. The Strokes-y jitters of ‘I Want To Be You’ tells the story of a young Howard looking at a band on stage and wondering if she wanted to be them, be with them, or both. “I wanna know what it means to be the one on TV,” she murmurs. “To have all eyes on me / I wish I was pretty.” The satirical ‘Nepotism (baby)’ – which rolls with the attitude and bounce of The Breeders – turns infatuation into envy, simultaneously awestruck and over the rich kid with “the smile of a thousand puppy dog heads” who can “show you how to live like you’ve never known”. ‘Mother’, meanwhile, uses a Talking Heads groove to explore the bond between mother and daughter and how the roots of that deepen as you grow up.
No matter what subject they’re writing about, Lime Garden are committed to mixing things up sonically. Album opener ‘Love Song’ mixes the best scuzzy, angular sounds of indie sleaze into a lowkey indie disco hit, while ‘Floor’ ups the vocal processing and adds a pulsating beat to make something dancier. Those layers often get stripped back to, like on the sparse and frosty ‘It’, or especially so on ‘Looking’, a raw acoustic finalé. That the band excel at all suggests one thing – the state of the music industry means their day jobs might have to stick around for now, but Lime Garden’s time in the spotlight isn’t ending any time soon.
