Lime Garden have been making brilliant indie pop since before the Garden was attached to the Lime as there is another band called Lime apparently that no one knows about. In this instance, adding two more syllables, if anything, suits them better. Because if nothing else, a garden is synonymous with things growing.
Even though, as Lime, they did release one of their best singles ‘Surf’n”Turf’, there is no doubt Lime Garden have blossomed into a fantastic pop band. One More Thing is the culmination of years of tinkering and testing and the result is a varied but cohesive record. There is so much humour in Chloe Howard’s lyrics and delivery, with the best line of last year, when describing Influencers “….with enough money to do, whatever the fuck it is they do“, mostly delivered in a brilliantly dead pan way that has the loudest audible eye roll this side of Lily Allen. Fuck you very much.
Whilst they have described the content as being generally about being miserable, it has the aesthetic of a band having the time of their lives. And they are. Because it is possible to feel both at the same time. As Chloe laments on ‘Pop Star’, “I don’t wanna work my job/cos life is short and this is long….. cos life is fleeting and I’m a pop star”.
‘Love Song’ is the upbeat opener we’d expect, and the lyrics are as droll as you’d expect, a song about someone but very specifically NOT a love song.
‘Mother’ is probably the most touching song we’ve heard from the band, a song about the infalability of your Mum and that they aren’t perfect and don’t always make the right choices and you shouldn’t have been such an arsehole when you were younger.
‘Nepotism (baby)’ is the highlight of their singles so far, dry and witty, taking the piss out of those who have had more than a helping hand up the ladder of success, be it Mummy and Daddy or selling your dead grandmother for Tic Toc followers.
‘Pine’, with its lonely solitary string (cello?!?), psychy backwards samples, discordant bass, scattergun drums, random guitar hooks and jittering keys dappling the background, it’s one of the most affecting tracks on the LP, Chloe again bemoaning opportunity in the music industry and those that don’t have the gumption to try.
Leila Deeley is another expert exponent of the wielding of the axe. Something all the greats know is that it is as much about what isn’t played as what is. Less is more sometimes and Leila perfectly punctuates each song with memorable and inventive licks and hooks that enhances them.
‘I Want To Be You’, one of the latter singles, is probably the most recognisably Lime Garden songs, if there is such a thing, but one that sounds like it was written early and around the time of singles ‘Pulp‘, ‘Clockwork‘ and ‘Sick and Tired‘.
‘Floor’ seems to be the ultimate send up of a mainstream, chart pop song, the autotuned effect on Chloe’s vocals appears on ‘Pop Star’ as a tongue in cheek amplifying of the paradox between the day job and being in a band starting to feel the beginnings of success, but here it is constant and comes across as a bit of pastiche and send up of the dull monotone pap taking up playlist room.
‘Fears’ is a twitching, paranoid list of being constantly worried about mundane and absurd things but ultimately being scared to maybe get what you want and the success you crave.
‘It’ is minimal and midnight scrapping meloncholy, on your own, on Brighton beach, wishing.
‘Looking‘ is a gentle and delicate closer. An indication of them still searching for the next step, the perfect pop song? If it exists they’re the ones I’d put money on finding it.
Perhaps this is a slightly unexpected debut album from a band more renowned for dancefloor fillers than the introspective, thoughtful record we have. They have said themselves that you can hear them growing up in the songs. For want of a better word, the songwriting and arrangements mature as you listen.
Lime Garden showed initial shoots of growth, stems of the plant and flowers they would become between 2020 and now. That time spent tending the patch has been more than worthwhile. Hopefuly we’re in for more than one more thing.
