Lime Garden don’t believe there should be a hierarchy between artists and audiences. So convinced are they of this that the entire band regularly get stuck in dancing with the crowd at the end of their live shows. They’re also easily excited: “I don’t understand how people aren’t,” says the band’s animated drummer Annabel Whittle, citing her love of festival buggies and the refrigerated chocolate left for them in their dressing rooms. We’re speaking at Standon Calling festival, where the band have defied the July heatwave and performed a bouncy set on The Independent’s Laundry Meadows stage. “We’re hysterical like puppies, the whole thing is like a giant lads holiday,” says vocalist Chloe Howard with a laugh. Indeed, the four-piece Brighton band have so much energy, at times it feels difficult to keep up. But if you can, it pays off.
Lime Garden (formerly LIME), came into being when Whittle, Howard, Leila Deeley (guitar) and Tippi Morgan (bass) moved in together in Brighton, having met via a Facebook group in 2018. It took them a while to find the “indie-slinky-wonk-pop” sound they’ve become known for. For starters, Morgan didn’t actually know how to play bass. After being “backed into a corner in the kitchen”, she was performing onstage with the rest of the band just a week later. At first, they incorporated a “mish-mash of different influences” – from Eighties ballads to country music – into their songs. In 2019, after taking interest in the bands emerging from London’s DIY scene, they began to refine that sound – even if they still explain it in different ways to different people. “If it’s a geezer in the pub, we just say indie” explains Howard. “And if it’s my nan, it’s rock’n’roll,” Whittle chips in.
