The brave new world of Lime Garden

Talk about an icebreaker. As a cool, deceptively sunny winter afternoon begins to fade, the members of Lime Garden are running riot on a frozen lake, encouraging NME to follow their lead. They skim pebbles, dance around, and dare each other to forward roll across the slippery, transparent surface – all of this, mind, is no mean feat for vocalist Chloe Howard, who is donning a pair of Doc Martens. “I feel so mighty standing here,” she says at one point, curling her arms into a bodybuilding pose and stomping on the spot for comedic effect.

We join the Brighton-based band on an excursion 20 miles out from the Icelandic capital of Reykjavík, exploring a postcode-like mountain range in the precious few hours they have off before a performance in the evening. Eyes wet from the freezing temperature and arms full of thermal layers, it’s a hugely exciting day for the four-piece: later on, they will appear at new music showcase Iceland Airwaves in support of their forthcoming debut ‘One More Thing’ (due February 16), a collection of pristine indie tunes – all crafted with wisdom, care and real heart.

A strong sense of perseverance runs through the album, bolstered by the warm glow of Howard and fellow guitarist Leila Deeley’s layered, yearning riffs. Accompanied by drummer Annabel Whittle and bassist Tippi Morgan, the pair reiterate that they are determined to make sure that the songwriting on ‘One More Thing’ “won’t pass people by”; it covers finding conviction in unsteady circumstances (‘Fears’) to building up the courage to mend familial ties later on in life (recent single ‘Mother’). “It’s more than just creating reflection / It’s giving up what you were,” Howard sings on the latter.

Beyond imbuing this 10-track effort with measured details of their own lived experiences, the music here tells its own story. ‘Floor’ and its moments of discordant and unexpected, Dorian Electra-style vocal processing, for example, embodies how isolating it can feel to be stuck in a situationship. “We wanted to push our sound further out than before because it feels like we’re entering a new era of our lives,” says Whittle, before Howard takes over. “We’ve never half-assed anything. It’s like, ‘If we’re going to do something, we’re going to have the best time giving all of ourselves to it.”

That sense of adventure, of four young people clearly dizzy with the excitement of life, can also be felt in the few hours NME spends with Lime Garden. They embrace each part of our walk with genuine childlike wonder at the landscape around them, and how they even ended up here. As the sun begins to set around 4pm, we head towards a beautiful, gently cascading waterfall, the sight of which brings Deeley to tears of near-disbelief.

“Days like today only happen once in your life,” says Whittle a few hours later, upon returning to the city to unpack the process behind ‘One More Thing’ with NME in a coffee shop. “The fact that we get to experience these things together as both friends and musicians is so cool; we’ve grown up around each other, and you can 100 per cent hear that in the music.”

Lime Garden met by equal parts fate, and a shared interest in making caffeinated but concise songs that solely focus on the fun factor. They formed via a string of chance Facebook encounters and spent their early days rehearsing in Guildford where they were studying music, before moving to Brighton after college to live together. It was in that house share that the band became fast friends: they bonded over a love for British indie acts that broke through in the late 2010s, including Black Honey, The Big Moon and Katy J Pearson, the latter whom they’d go on to support in August 2021.

Two months later, a sold-out gig at Brighton indie venue the Prince Albert caught the attention of So Young Records [Humour, Nightbus], whose resources and funding helped the band – who all hold part-time roles in venue management, retail and hospitality – garner the attention of tastemakers. “What started out as a bit of fun snowballed quickly,” says Howard. “I don’t think we realised how vulnerable we were: we had so many people around us all of a sudden. It was like we were taking on the world.”

Cradling a mocha, Howard describes how after they landed a label deal, the band felt the sudden need to “step up”, knowing that other people now had a vested interest in Lime Garden’s trajectory. Yet ‘One More Thing’, which arrives four years after they started releasing tracks online, is the sound of what a group can create when given the time, space and support to grow as both people and performers; it embodies the ebb and flow of taking band life as it comes.

Take album highlight ‘Pop Star’, on which the band sing of getting sucked into online discourse around nepotism in music. Against an unrelenting rhythm section, Howard’s vocals spiral and move in and out of a drawl, mimicking a slow descent into frustration. The track is playfully absurd in its pace and lyric content, and reminiscent of the dark humour that defined Dry Cleaning’s 2021 debut ‘New Long Leg’.

“Whenever we’re together for a long period of time, we form a language that revolves around understanding each other’s routines and behaviours,” Whittle explains assuredly, noting how the album was recorded entirely in a productive two-week burst, during which they decamped to an Airbnb in Bristol. “But a lot of what we make reflects how our lives are made up of ridiculous highs and crazy lows – there’s no inbetween.”

Despite being excited to further immerse themselves in the life-altering friendship they have made and share together, this album campaign is the first period where Lime Garden have properly “felt the heat,” says Morgan. “We’ve literally got the release date saved in our calendars as ‘Judgement Day’.” In the months leading up to their Iceland Airwaves gig, the band made their festival debuts at Glastonbury and Latitude, alongside a run of European dates, and learned how it feels to have to sacrifice attending friend’s birthdays and family events in order to play shows and increase their influence on both the local and international live circuit.

Still, Lime Garden spend much of our conversation surveying how far they’ve come; they are self-starters who play hard but work harder. “My dad texted me earlier to say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you’re all on this trip in Iceland’,” says Deeley. “Sometimes we just need those little reminders, so we can say to ourselves: you’ve made it this far.”

Lime Garden’s debut album ‘One More Thing’ will be released on February 16 via So Young Records

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