“…turn the music up a teeny bit so I can fucking let loose!?”.
You heard it. Lime Garden have levelled up and been let out of the cage. Shifting steadily away from their guitar-chugging foundations, and genuflecting before the Unholy Mother of the Big Disco Beat, new single ‘23’ ushers in a revelrous new era.
If debut album ‘One More Thing’ was about being indoors and wanting to go out more, it seems like its follow-up ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ – due 10th April – on the evidence of its teasers thus far, is about what happens when you go out too much. You might know the feeling, where the hangover is so dense it puts years on you, and even though the morning-after emotional palette is a maze of dopamine memory, heightened reflection, blind-baked regret, you’re still standing proudly on the top of the world and the height of life.
Whatever the aesthetic, as has been consistent through their career so far, underpinning Lime Garden redux (with Wolf Alice-producer Charlie Andrew at the helm) is great, succinct songwriting and a barrelful of melodic hooks. The bassline slides on ‘23’ are sooo thicccc – juice it and drink it up every morning to swell your muscle mass, the experts will one day be saying. And the groove! It struts and sashays like the pumping triumph of an indie-disco beer-swill. Those Guitar lines! Ripping like lightsabers through the hearts of our enemies. And the vocals – lifted up so high, they can almost pinch the stars.
Photo by Steve Gullick
The new issue of So Young is out now. Buy in print here. Read the digital edition below. Subscribe to receive every issue here.