Lime Garden share their debut album ‘One More Thing’
The girl group share their hotly-anticipated debut album.
Photo: Sal Redpath
“I don’t know how we’d do this if we weren’t mates,” comments Annabel Whittle, drummer of the band. “I think because we’re so close it creates a very open environment to make music where we can say whatever we want, and we won’t be judged for it.”
Lime Garden is a band that has provided their fans and crowds with solid indie rock releases that manage to intertwine their joy and more downhearted emotions, all while having fun doing it. It’s a band who have had to fight hard to get where they currently are, be that through the trials and tribulations of a band and fitting that around ‘regular lives’, or finding their place in a historically male-dominated industry.
Through their hard work and friendship, the band bring us their debut album, One More Thing, an exploration into this journey and what essentially is an emotional look into the band themselves.
The sounds of 2000s adolescence seep through into all parts of this album, which is evident straight from the start with Love Song, which marks the opening of this album. It’s full of those wonky lo-fi riffs and licks that we reminisce about when we think of that era gone by. It plays a brilliant juxtaposition to the more melancholy and almost mournful places lyrics that have a real coming-of-age to them, a feeling not just linked to the release of the album, but to the members growing into the people they are today. “As I walk, as I bleed, I wanna take you everywhere with me / As I cry, as I weep, I want you to know that,” suddenly reminds you that this isn’t the feel-all-good album that the melodies may trick you into thinking.
This journey is continued in Pop Star, a song that would seem to centre around a pivotal moment for the band, but peppered with light-hearted tongue-in-cheek feeling. It quickly jumps and doesn’t give you a second to process the previous track ending with it’s catchy and high energy beat. It’s a song that explores the dreams and ambitions of the band, whilst still living their ‘real’ lives working their ‘real’ jobs. This feeling is complemented with a delightful synth-heavy chorus, almost giving it this dreamy-pop feeling until returning to the real-life verse. It’s likely to be a real earworm of a song.
“I feel like you can hear us growing up in these songs,” comments Howard. This is something you can completely hear throughout the album. I Want to Be You, a single released late last year, is a little jangly hook-filled hit that will bring you back to a day in yesteryear. It was surprising how well this song really encapsulates that coming-of-age feeling, making you reminisce of a teen staring out of gloomy bus windows, not really knowing your place in the world. Commenting on the song, Howard says: “I was inspired by a very specific memory I have as a 14-year-old at my first gig looking at the band playing and thinking ‘Do I want to be you or be with you, or do I want both?’. This feeling has continued to raise its head on many occasions in my life, and it’s become quite an obsessive process at times. Growing up with social media and the constant ability to follow your idols, with access into ‘their world’, has fuelled this in an unhealthy way.”
Floor is perhaps the most interesting, most experimental song on the album. While auto-tune is explored across this album, its use is doubled down here and strays the song much more heavily into a synth-electropop sound. It gives the feeling of much later influences than seen on most of One More Thing, reminiscent of mid-2010s Charli XCX or Chvrches. While unconventional when compared to what we’ve previously seen from the band, Floor is an excellent show of the band’s daring nerve to plunge themselves into unfamiliar territory.
“I fear the feeling of failure / I fear the thought of some success” is the first line we hear from the next song Fears. It’s most likely a fear we have all had – the song catches it perfectly. It starts at a hauntingly slow pace as more of a vocal piece, simply going the pace it wishes to be. But it quickly turns up the power in seemingly the bat of an eye, capturing the anxiety overcoming a person after such a long calm. Howard credits the song to one particularly outstanding episode of morning dread: “I just wrote down everything I was afraid of. We’ve spent our whole lives chasing this goal and this dream that we all share and obviously I fear that never working out. But I also fear not having the fear – like if we do everything we set out to do, what would we do then?”
The album ends on the acoustic and piano led Looking. It’s a real emotionally rich song, and perhaps shows more of the vulnerabilities of the four than any other song by the band to date. Slow heartfelt riffs are the game here, which when accompanied with Howard’s soft vocals makes a wonderful last track. It’s just really is a great way to end what is an album of real passion.
One More Thing is a journey in more ways than one; it’s watching the journey of friends and a band go through their highs and lows; a journey of a band who’s all-female line-up makes them a stand out in an industry that’s usually seen as a boys club. This debut album is a testament to all of that. “When we first started out, we'd be the only girls in any venue – and most of the time we still are,” says Howard, “We want young girls to watch us and hopefully think, ‘Maybe I can be in a band’, because we never ever had that.”
One More Thing is out now via So Young Records.
