FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Lime Garden

FEATURE:

Spotlight: Revisited

Lime Garden

__________

I feel Lime Garden…

are one of the absolute best British bands in circulation. I spotlighted them in 2022. Their second studio album, Maybe Not Tonight, was released earlier this month. The band, Chloe Howard, Annabel Whittle, Tippi Morgan, Leila Deeley, the Brighton band played a homecoming gig at the Green Door Store on 19th April. They return to Brighton 14th May for The Great Escape 2026. They have European and British dates coming through this year. A growing and loving fanbase throwing their weight and love behind Lime Garden. I am going to finish with a couple of reviews for Maybe Not Tonight. I am going to bring in a couple of recent interviews. NME spoke with Lime Garden’s frontperson, Chloe Howard, about their second studio album. In the conversation she explores “why “it's important to show the realistic side of self-destructive fun behaviour":

“Another single that’s been dominating indie radio airwaves is ’23’ – a devastating self-reckoning about life in your 20s not being quite as you’d imagined as Howard mourns: “At 17 I had the world in my hands and at 23 I just lost it/Something about the fact I’m losing my edge I’m getting further away from a profit.”

“I had a nightmare where I was talking to my 17-year-old self and she was giving me a hard time about where I was in life,” she told NME. “I thought that would be a fun situation to write about, but in general I am quite hard on myself.”

And what did her 17-year-old self expect of her?

“I think she thought I’d have a Lamborghini and a stable income by now, but hey – it’s 2026!”

Fair enough. After all, the anxiety and fear of your mid-20s is hard enough without being heightened by modern pressures.

“Every 23-year-old would say it’s the hardest for them,” she added. “When you’re in your early 20s you think the world revolves around you, and that’ll be the same for every generation ever. But I do think with social media, the element of comparison is stronger than ever. We’re all insane at that age.”

The work to be creative while constantly being judged online, as well as what already comes with everyday life, also fed into the album. “I hate the way my body looks too, if that helps, but it won’t,” Howard sings on ‘Body’. “I hate the way I’m looking at you, you look so beautiful…I’m jealous, and I blame you for it.”

“We’re in a weird position because we’re in a band,” said Howard, explaining the song. “We see way too many photos of ourselves. No human should see that many photos of themselves. We’re young women and people are mean online.

“It’s about being open about that and being a bit more vulnerable. Our conversations about that definitely bled into the lyrics.”

‘Maybe Not Tonight’ was also written during a period of collective “mass breakup” among the band, feeding into the ethos of tracks like ‘Body’, ‘Lifestyle’ and ‘All Bad Parts’ facing up to uncomfortable truths to make sense of of the world.

“We have a studio in Peckham and we’re there every Tuesday and Wednesday,” Howard said. “Our writing time became a therapy session for each other. It was very cathartic. We would scream and cry together, and then we’d go out together. The whole album and writing process was fuelled by those emotions.”

Ultimately, the album is a process of working through anxieties, fears, traumas and one’s own choices and mistakes, or as Howard put it, “You have to actually face up to yourself”.

I shamefully overlooked Lime Garden when I published a feature predicting which artists and albums will be shortlisted for a Mercury Prize later this year. I do feel like Maybe Not Tonight could be among the dozen shortlisted. DIY spent some time with Lime Garden recently. 2024’’s One More Thing was a fantastic debut. Since that came out, the quartet has shared tour vans, bar rounds and highs and lows. Now, Lime Garden have “distilled the irresistible alchemy of their best mates/band dynamic into new LP ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ - a riotous ode to the glorious chaos of a good night out”:

“Maybe Not Tonight’ is an album poised on a knife-edge. Following the narrative arc of a similar such night out, it starts with ‘23’ - a look at the running-out-of-time existential crisis that anyone in their mid-twenties is familiar with - before we find our protagonists hitting the self-destruct button, exploding a perfectly innocent pre-drinks (‘Cross My Heart’) into an unhinged swirl of dwindling self-awareness (the title track) and wronged romance (‘Undressed’).

Anyone vaguely familiar with Lime Garden will know that one album which dominated their playlists over the last four years was a certain lime green club-pop behemoth. Its exploration of the millennial experience through the lens of letting life get a bit messy is clearly weaved into the fabric of ‘Maybe Not Tonight’, but in a way that speaks less to trips to Berghain and more to impromptu meets in The Hope and Ruin. Chloe ponders the parallels: “I think with albums like ‘brat’, that’s a very one-sided view on going out. Charli xcx is a gorgeous, rich, 33 year old woman, and we’re a bunch of skint 24-year- olds, so it’s a very different experience for us. We were channelling that to an extent, but we wanted it more to feel like you’d bumped into us in the smoking area and we were just baring our souls to you, then regretting it the next day!”

Cue Annabel shyly explaining how the opening night of a European tour in Amsterdam near-perfectly coincided with her relationship ending. Ideal. “We’d all been feeling angry and chaotic across that summer,” she recalls, “but I’d had a break-up one week before the tour started and venues treat you so nicely in Europe, so we got given so much free beer that we were out until probably five or six in the morning. Obviously, I threw up everywhere; it was the best start to a tour you could hope for!”

Chloe then unfurls another story of some French festival antics: “Me and Annabel stayed out watching Hot Chip until the festival shut down and we were thrown out, basically. We had to walk the whole way back to our hotel, which we didn’t realise was about two hours away from the site. We were just running through fields of crops trying to get back; we have so many stupid stories like that!”

As much as there is a rich vein of fun running right through the middle of both the band and this new record, liberation also comes balanced out by discussions of self-doubt (‘Body’), jealousy (‘Lifestyle’), and the general sense that the release partying can provide is something of a coping mechanism in a world which feels constantly on the verge of tearing itself apart. Reflecting on why the dancefloor is now the lingua franca for new acts (Fcukers) and established artists (Harry Styles, Arlo Parks) alike, Chloe posits: “We were all like 17 or 18 when Covid started, and we missed out on quite a lot of the partying era of our lives. As soon as we were let out, we went fucking nuts!”

While not a complete departure from the sights and sounds they made their name with, ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ finds Lime Garden with the shackles off, refusing to play by any rules. To paraphrase Annabel’s beloved Daft Punk: it’s bigger, better, faster, and stronger.

After two years sat on a record that took them about six months to complete, Chloe is already raring to go for Album Three: “[‘Maybe Not Tonight’] made us less afraid to take risks, which is all I’ll say about the next record”, she quips. But for the time being, the quartet are basking in a sea of their own success. “The longer we do this, the more I’m grateful to keep doing it,” Chloe beams. “I think my dream is just to keep rocking out until we’re 70 year old ladies or something.” Annabel agrees - sort of - before adding “world domination” to their list of desires. If Lime Garden continue at this pace, we’d challenge anyone to stand in their way”.

Before getting to a couple of reviews for Maybe Not Tonight, DORK spent time talking with Lime Garden. They chatted about how “Tuesdays spent writing, crying and screaming became the backbone of their second album”. An exhilarating, hugely talented and original young band bringing Rock back into the conversation – Charli xcx recently said how she was moving from the dance floor and her next album will be a Rock one -, here is a band who dreams of playing Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage – and that wish will be granted in 2027 I feel:

“As a group, making 'Maybe Not Tonight' marked a shift in confidence. Priorities changed, boundaries strengthened, and musically, the band allowed themselves more freedom. For Leila, that meant embracing bolder guitar parts and sharper textures. “The guitars are so much more free, bolder, chunkier, more feedback, and more brash and spikey on this record, which I love,” she says. That confidence was tied closely to personal growth. “I was in a place of really trying to learn to embrace the positives of anger and learn to stick up for myself more at the time. I like that this comes through in the record.”

The album is also built around a concept that revealed itself almost accidentally. During sessions, drummer Annabel Whittle drew a bell curve mapping the emotional arc of a night out, placing tracks along it. “It blew our minds,” Leila says. Side A captures anticipation and excitement, while Side B spirals into insecurity and emotional fallout. “Seeing your ex with someone else at said party, bringing up all of your insecurities and crying on the way home, wondering if you’ll ever be able to love anyone else again,” she explains, before laughing at the drama of it all. “A painful yet very relatable experience, we hope.”

If there is one thing no one warns you about your mid twenties, according to Lime Garden, it is how suddenly lost you can feel. “The cockiness from adolescence wears off,” Leila says. “You go through one breakup and are like, where am I, who even am I, and what am I even doing?” Experiencing that confusion simultaneously brought the band closer. “We could understand each other very well, and maybe not feel as insane through sharing our similar experiences.”

Balancing that emotional intensity with touring and day jobs proved to be the biggest challenge. “Definitely figuring out the message we wanted to convey all the while balancing it with working and touring,” Leila says, laughing at the realities of indie band life. But the end result feels worth it. She hopes the album surprises people. “Lyrically and musically it’s bolder, wiser, braver,” she says. “Annabel has really added a harder, braver electronic flavour which has levelled up our sound to the max.” Chloe’s performances, she adds, were often goosebump-inducing. “It makes you feel like you’re hearing all of her secrets, perhaps ones you shouldn’t have overheard.”

Looking ahead, the ambitions are big but heartfelt. Tokyo remains a dream. Glastonbury Pyramid Stage, naturally, is on the list. In the meantime, the band are deep in unexpected obsessions, from beekeeping to ice hockey. “I can’t stop researching beekeeping,” Leila says. “There’s something so interesting about how those little guys instinctually work together in community; it’s genius.” As a band, though, their current fixation is firmly elsewhere. “Ice hockey is well and truly on the mind,” she laughs. “We went to a game in London the other day for Chloe’s surprise birthday, it was epic. They even played ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns N’ Roses at one point. It all felt very theatrical and dramatic and showbiz, which we of course enjoyed.”

What Lime Garden want most right now is simple. They are touring extensively this year, and they want people in the room. “We will be very tired, very satisfied and proud and tired,” Leila says. “Come see us play. Rock is alive”.

Getting back to NME for their take on Maybe Not Tonight. Showing their love for a reckless soundtrack to life in your twenties, Lime Garden's second album “wears its messiness on its sleeve, Lime Garden’s second is figuring life out, track by track”:

“As Brighton quartet Lime Garden were beginning work on the follow-up to their 2024 debut ‘One More Thing’, their four members went through what they’ve described as “a mass break-up”. A somewhat unfortunate act of sisterly symbiosis, each split with their respective partners in tandem “like dominoes”. Rather than sit and wallow in their collective misfortune, however, vocalist/guitarist Chloe Howard, guitarist Leila Deeley, bassist Tippi Morgan and drummer Annabel Whittle chose chaos – and now blazing, brilliant second album ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ lands as a slice of victorious closure.

Loosely structured across a big night out, the reckless spirit of the album might stem from a period of personal disarray but it also lends itself extremely well to the famously difficult junction of a second record. Where many bands overthink themselves into a corner, trying to turn out something slicker and more serious, there’s a hedonistic, ‘fuck it’ energy to the first half of ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ that practically fizzes out of the speakers. Lime Garden’s playfulness has always led to their best work, but here they sound fully unleashed: experimenting with cheeky, wonky synths on ‘All Bad Parts’ and deadpan slacker delivery on ‘Downtown Lover’.

When Charli XCX appeared on the Tape Notes podcast, she walked listeners through the messy trajectory of ‘365’, from owning the club to overdoing it in the toilet cubicle. ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ takes this idea and transposes it for twenty-somethings with a maxed-out overdraft, a pouch of rollies and a dream. Opener ‘23’ sees Howard take a deep breath and step into the mix; the aforementioned ‘All Bad Parts’ is probably the most mischievous song about the crutch of alcohol that we’ve heard in a long time, while ‘Maybe Not Tonight’’s title track rages through the night, landing like a lost indie sleaze classic.

By the album’s second half, we’ve hit the self-lacerating part of the evening when the demons kick in. ‘Body’ seethes jealously at another woman across the room (“I hate the way I’m looking at you / You look so beautiful”), while ‘Undressed’ shrivels at the sight of an old flame over Deeley’s Strokes-esque guitars. But even when the internal monologues are dark, the band’s innate knack for an indie hook stops these thought spirals from ever killing ‘Maybe Not Tonight’’s vibe.

On ‘Always Talking About You’, Howard admits her secret fantasies: ”I want to be famous / I want to be rich / I want everybody to say that’s that bitch”. The first two points might remain in question, but when it comes to getting over your exes, Lime Garden are those bitches that have come out the other side, all guns blazing”.

I am finishing up with Song Bar. They had some insightful and warm words for an album that I feel is going to win the band awards. Lime Garden embarking on these tour dates at the moment. All of this experience on the road will strengthen their shout at headline slots. They are talked about as a phenomenal live band. Go and see them if you can:

“Zesty, fresh, infectiously catchy, smash-and-grab synthy indie-pop-rock by the Brighton quartet, packed with fabulous riffs and melodies and droll, tongue-in-cheek lyrics that engagingly chart the highs and lows, the joys and insecurities of a big night out. As lead singer Chloe Howard describes: “The album is about a night out, from start to finish. As the night progresses, you’re having a great time, until your ex walks in with someone else. You hate the way you look but rather than going home, you press the big red button and get even more drunk. Eventually, you take yourself home full of melancholy, chaos and anger.” The instantly hooky opener 23 is perfect pop with a choppy guitars and a simple, insistent, deep bass-y boing, and the line: “When I was 17 I had the world at my feet; and at 23, I just lost it.” Cross My Heart has faint echoes of the rousing synth-pop La Roux’s Bulletproof, but also distinctive Lime Garden guitar funk energy, the band unafraid to capture the feel of energising pop from anywhere from the 80s to 2000s and add something of their own. Downtown Lover is noisy brasher guitar indie, Howard’s bright assertive vocal across chaotic fuzz guitars. All Bad Parts is eccentrically squiggly synth pop and funk disco, the title track a splashy piece of syncopated indie undulating between brief uncertainty and voluminous dance joy. Every track explodes with a fresh, vital energy, from the darker feedback tones of Body to the thrum of Undressed to the tender-to-brash ebb-and-flow tones and insecurities and sounds of Do You Know What I’m Thinking About? A fabulous release that moves between stop-start clever asides and explosions of sound when in full throttle, they are also hugely entertaining live prospect. Out on So Young Records”.

With the extraordinary Maybe Not Tonight out there collecting rave reviews and Lime Garden having this busy diary. It is going to be an exceptional remainder of the year. From there, they will get U.S. dates, big festival bookings and grow into one of the most revered bands in the world. That is why I wanted to come back to…