Lime Garden are a four-piece made up of vocalist Chloe Howard, guitarist Layla Deeley, bassist Tibby Morgan and drummer Annabelle Whittle, who met while studying in Guildford before moving to Brighton after college. Originally known as LIME, they had to change their name to avoid confusion with the Montreal disco group of the same name, of which they knew existed but never thought they would reach a point where it would matter. After sharing a strong collection of singles and touring with the likes of Yard Act and IDLES, the band have just released their debut album, another thingWhich was recorded in Bristol with producer Ali Shant. Describing themselves as 'funk pop', their music is fast, fun and melodic, and the immediacy of the album never conflicts with the band's more anarchic tendencies; If anything, their pop sensibilities and cheerful sense of humor allow them to become stranger and more vulnerable as the album progresses, making for a dynamic experience that suggests there are always more sides to Lime Garden than they actually show us. They are no strangers to the realities of the music industry but are interested in the thrills of life outside the mundane, and chasing a dream in that way alone is part of the fun.
We caught up with Lime Garden for the latest edition of our site Artist lights series To talk about the early days of the band, the big dream, and the process behind it another thingAnd more.
How do you look back on the early days of the band, and what were your first impressions of each other?
Chloe Howard: Me, Layla, Annabelle – Annabelle helps load the truck now – we all met in Guildford at college, and Layla was the only girl on my course. And I remember thinking she was the most amazing whore I had ever seen.
Leila Daily: I remember thinking you were the coolest bitch I'd ever seen!
CH: Here we go!
LD: [laughs] It was so natural, we stuck together straight away, and haven't really stopped since we were 17 years old. I remember you saying, “Do you want to hang out at our house?” I had a car at the time and she was sitting in the seat next to me, and she was playing really great tunes. I was like, “Oh, this is really nice!”
CH: It was one of the most natural meetings I've ever had. One of those things, I don't know if you believe in fate or anything, but I definitely feel like we were meant to meet for a reason.
LD: Annabelle is from Scotland, Tibby is from the Wirral, Chloe is from Oxford, and I'm from Surrey, so it's really crazy.
How quickly did you go from connecting on a personal level to feeling like you shared the same musical vision?
CH: Since we played our first show at the Boileroom in Guildford, we've always been on the same page – that's what we want to do.
LD: “Dream big.”
CH: Yes, we have always been “dream big”. We've all sacrificed a lot to do this, but it's also everything we want to do. We've always been on the same level with that – I think half the battle with starting a band and trying to make it in music is to be on the same level.
LD: We are all equal in power to each other [laughs].
CH: Intensely around the music too, so it's the perfect balance.
Some of the album's songs, especially around the middle, are about fame and success. I was recently talking to Rachel Gagliardi, who were half of the punk band Slutever and had just released their first album as Pouty, and there's a song in there that's about wanting to play big stages. She was telling me how liberating it feels to admit it out loud after being in the scene for so long, even if it's in a sarcastic way, like in your song “Pop Star.” In the next song, “Payne”, she sings, “Everyone wants to do it but no one seems to admit you have an ego big enough to sail on a ship. I'm curious if you feel a similar way when putting that into your music.
CH: 100%. You know, tonight we're in Norwich playing in front of 2,000 people, but in a couple of days, we'll be back in action. We're so lucky to live such crazy, contradictory lives, which is a really interesting thing to talk about. I also love peeing, it's a lot of fun.
Tippi Morgan: I think admitting out loud that this is what you want to do full time — we want to play bigger shows — makes it more realistic. You just believe it.
LD: And it's very common in music for people to play on a small scale.
CH: Definitely, the culture of belittling your aspirations as a band.
TM: And be completely humble.
LD: We definitely did that in the past, but now we really want to have our own space.
CH: In terms of the ego stuff too, I had a big realization through writing the album: there's a lot of ego involved in performing and writing music and the whole industry is fueled by ego, and a lot of people act like they're above you and don't have this selfish way of operating, but if you're an artist and you choose to showcase… For your art to be noticed, you'll automatically have an ego, which I never thought about before.
LD: Everyone has an ego, it's literally the way we're designed. But I think he works where he sits, and can I help you and others if I share something cool? That's certainly the way we look at it.
How did you collectively decide not to diminish your ambition in this way?
CH: I think it was all very natural. During the process of recording the album and sitting down on it –
LD: And touring and playing festivals.
CH: We just knew we wanted to own our own space. We are happy to be in this industry.
TM: You gain more confidence in yourself, like, “I have to be here. I have to do this.”
I mentioned the song “Pain” which is used singing And the guitar as more compositional elements contribute to Atmosphere the Song. How was it playing with that?
CH: Very interesting, isn't it?
LD: Yes, Ali [Chant], who produced the album, really listened to all the things we were keen to try. And we tried a lot of things that didn't even register. Just working that way, very loosely, was a huge game changer. That song changed a lot in the studio.
CH: I feel like a lot of our music is very lyrically driven, so it was fun to take a step back in that sense and have the melodic elements of the music do the talking instead. That was quite liberating.
How did you decide which experiences to stick with?
CH: It was all a feeling really.
LD: We all have very similar things, like, “No, this is an exit.”
TM: If someone doesn't feel it right away, they'll disconnect.
CH: There's a feeling when you listen to a piece of music — “Fears” is the feeling that sticks with me — when you hear it in the studio all the way through for the first time, you can feel an energy in the room that hasn't been there. But you'll listen to it sometimes and there'll be that feeling in the room.
LD: It's like you're done with everything.
CH: And you won't really say anything, you'll just do it [all nod]. Ali was involved in that early on with us as well, so we were all close in mind.
LD: On the flip side of it, we've definitely in the past overcooked things, and a lot of this album knew when to stop. Trusting the song, not having to fluff it.
When it comes to the AutoTune found on “Pop Star” and more prominently on “Floor,” did that seem like a risk at the time?
CH: We've always been a little bit rebellious. We've been stuck in this indie post-punk world for a long time, so we wanted to do something that hasn't really been done in that kind of context. Really being done in this kind of way
LD: We love pop music. It's something completely natural that we love, so we felt it was impossible to do without it.
CH: “Pop Star” movie happened-
TM: We were messing around with AutoTune and said, “We should just use it.”
CH: And “Floor” was a dream pop song. We wrote it three years ago – I remember I had the melody in mind and we were going to write it in the studio that day. I thought about just playing around with the melody with that, it was a big experiment at the moment.
With a song like “Mother,” which I know came from a conversation I had with you, Chloe with your mother, how could you Show that to the band and bring it to a file Collaborative context?
CH: Lyrically, I write all the time, and I just keep things with me. Every so often a girl will send something that's just music, and when I listen to it, it'll make me think of this thing she wrote or that thing she wrote. With “Mother,” Annabelle and I wrote music together, and I knew as soon as we did that, that these lyrics that I had were meant to go together. This is how I paired the two.
You mentioned the song “Fears” which made me wonder if you start with that when writing A broad theme or feeling Keeping in mind that you are trying then Keep persisting until you come up with something interesting. Or if you have a central line or a chorus and try to build around that.
CH: That song, I was feeling really anxious and couldn't sleep, so I just wrote a list of everything I was afraid of, basically, and I thought it could be a fun concept for a song. I made this episode, and it had this monotonous, repetitive feeling that was anxiety-inducing in itself. But it's different for every song, right?
LD: Yes, and it usually takes a completely different direction in the studio.
TM: It was quite empty, I think, and it naturally ended up being its own thing.
CH: All of our songs have different starting points, which I think is what keeps it so exciting, writing music as a group. You never know where the next song is going to come from, whether it's a bass line, a beat, a guitar line, a few words, or a melody. You can start from anything. That's why I think we have a variety of sounds within the album.
When you got to that line, “I dread the thought of some success,” what was the thinking behind making that the focus of the song?
CH: Well, the band is my life, so I don't have much to offer the world, so that's what I write about a lot of the time. I thought it was an interesting concept because we've spent most of our adult lives doing this and chasing this dream, and I was imagining: What if we did this?
TM: And we talk about it all the time: What if we did? What will happen next, who will we become?
CH: And if we achieve everything we set out to achieve, how will I feel? Will I feel complete? That's what I was thinking at that moment, I guess.
How did you decide to end the record with two of the most intimate songs?
LD: The more we tried other approaches, the more we all collectively felt that it slowed down the pace.
CH: You can hear that we became more vulnerable as the record went on. It starts out with the strong pop songs that we like to make, and I think it's cool that as the record progresses, it becomes a little more experimental, a little more vulnerable. It's as if the listener is allowed to sit with us for a while, and we let them into the world a little more.
Can you share one thing that inspires you about each other?
TM: I had never played an instrument before joining this band, and the band was very open and non-judgmental – I felt like I just slipped in.
LD: It felt like that for us too.
TM: It's nice to know that there's no judgment from anyone. It's not a contest about who can play what.
LD: Tippy never holds a grudge no matter what. Anyone could do something really bad, and you'd still say, “Hey!” [laughs] I think this is great. Chloe, I aspire to be as confident as her, she has unwavering confidence.
TM: And swag!
LD: And I love it. Annabelle-
TM: He is literally the coolest person on Earth.
LD: She runs her life like a ram.
CH: Have a great time. Mine is – I feel like I'll be a kid forever, hanging out with these girls.
LD: Same thing.
CH: We had a lot of fun, and they are very talented. I don't want to do this to anyone else.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Lime Garden another thing It is out now via So Young Records.
