ALBUM REVIEWS
Following a stellar run of singles – from the groove-punk ditty ‘Surf N Turf’ to ‘Pulp’, which sounds like if Scissor Sisters covered The Breeders – 2022 saw Brighton four-piece Lime Garden sprint to the top of Ones To Watch lists. They’ve since supported The Big Moon on tour and have appeared at major festivals across the globe, building some serious momentum ahead of their debut ‘One More Thing’. Plucking sounds and aesthetics from both late ’00s indie sleaze and contemporary alt-pop, this stellar record – which takes its name from a short story by Raymond Carver – is nothing short of electric.
With its flurry of siren-like effects, plus the combination of lead songwriter Chloe Howard’s howling vocals and guitarist Leila Deeley’s jagged riffs, ‘Love Song’ immediately demands attention. ‘Mother’ – a deeply moving reflection on the relationship between a parent and an adult daughter – leans more into atmospheric shoegaze, rather than the previous track’s Bloc Party-like urgency. “Can’t afford to live my life / I’m scared of living or to die / The thought of what it would be like / As the years seem to go bye-bye,” Howard sings.
Recent single ‘Pop Star’ details the highs and lows of pursuing your rock ‘n’ roll dreams while still working a second, “real” job. The realities of navigating the music industry is a theme that is revisited throughout the LP. ‘Fears’, for example, replicates the surreal, underwater feeling of rising panic; especially when your dreams seem inaccessible and determined to lock you out.
Tracks like ‘Floor’ – a fun and endearing auto-tuned dance track reminiscent of Charli XCX’s ‘Boys’ – and ‘Pine’ demonstrate the band’s eagerness for experimentation. The only moment where the record meanders is on the slightly muddy ‘It’, which starts slow and trails along without arriving anywhere powerful.
‘Nepotism (Baby)’ and ‘I Want To Be You’ explore the complicated relationships women often have with one another; twisting sombre jealousy with admiration. Witty and sardonic, Lime Garden’s lyrics would feel at home on any great sprechgesang record: “Tried to get surgery to see her how you see,” they sing on the latter. Yet the band’s exuberant sound marks them as their own distinct entity; entirely within their own league.
ALBUM REVIEWS
Listening to Karin Ann’s debut album ‘Through the Telescope’, you’d be forgiven for not realising that the Slovakian singer-songwriter is just 21-years-old. There is a knowing darkness to this music, which brims with observations earned through experience and the mystique of an author with many stories to tell.
“All his skin eaten by worms / Nothing left there / A pile of bones”, Ann sings on ‘Pile of Bones’. For all its macabre imagery – a through line across the album’s 14 tracks – the song is delivered like a fairytale, with Ann’s soft, ethereal vocals floating like wisps of smoke around its beating heart.
Her singing voice is light, calling to mind the ease and indie droll of Faye Webster and Frankie Cosmos. It all feeds into the album’s curious mix of light and dark, as Ann sings through honeyed whispers of deep emotional strife, from losing faith to leaving childhood behind too early, embedding these dark secrets in twinkling melodies and delicate guitar strings. “The band keeps playing while I continue to cry”, she sings softly on dollhouse-like track ‘The Band Keeps Playing’. “Maybe they won’t see that my dress keeps tearing / And it’s swallowing me”.
Ann’s songwriting is at its strongest when it goes for specifics. There’s queer love song ‘Olivia’, ‘A Song for the Moon’ – a love letter to the darker sides of herself – or ‘My Best Work of Art’, the album’s lovely closer that chronicles Ann’s reclamation of her own identity through the lens of painting and brushstrokes.
After a tough few years fighting illness and cutting her teeth in music, Ann delivers a confident and unflinching debut album. ‘Through The Telescope’ weaves her personal struggles into beautiful, potent songwriting, which she gives space to breathe amidst lush vocals and rich, but never overblown instrumentation. Dancing deftly across folk, rock, country and pop, and spanning emotional landscapes from lovestruck to melancholy, this is a most precocious debut.
