“I literally thought today that Dork had been going for 100 years,” Chloe from Lime Garden announces to a packed Sebright Arms. “Like, get it girllsss! Since the 20s!”
Since the first drops of Lime fell into our music cocktail, they’ve been a band brimming with brilliance. A knack for fun, passion for the party and most importantly, that instinct to serve up moreish bangers by the dozen. With debut album ‘One More Thing’, they met the hype and soared. Now the question is: what comes next? Tonight at Sebright Arms for Dork 100, Lime Garden offer the biggest tease yet of their golden next chapter.
Openers Goodbye may be the freshest name to play the Dork 100 series, but they demonstrate exactly why we’re excited about them. They grip the Sebright Arms throughout their quickfire set. Though not even a year since their first gig together, they already have it. Shoegazey dream-pop builds and pulls (think Warpaint meets Pumarosa), at times purely cinematic, then biting with fury. It feels like the sort of set that in 12 months people will reference as their first-chance-to-see – capturing what we’ve championed at Dork since day one. The exciting and new is always ready to burst through the door, and Goodbye will do it sooner than you think.
A hunger pulsates through everything Ain’t do this evening. Like lighting firecrackers in the basement of the Sebright Arms, they pop and rip apart everything before them. The biting ‘April’ and searing ‘June’ are highlights of their set, turning crunching anxiety into something urgent and vital. Even when stripped raw, it silences Sebright Arms in one swoop. It’s a twist on darkness that finds a perfect home tonight from a band who grow more undeniable with each move.
By the time Lime Garden take to the stage, Sebright Arms has become a proper sweat box. That’s inevitable when a band who made their name in venues like this returns after landmark after landmark night, and it’s why the atmosphere crackles. Tonight finds Lime Garden building foundations for their next chapter, coming straight from recording studio sessions for album number two. It makes for a must-see moment, with fresh new tracks debuted to an eager crowd.
On tonight’s evidence, Lime Garden are going panoramic – with a confidence that radiates across the room. ’23’ is a strutting LCD Soundsystem-esque banger that proves impossible to stand still for as lead singer Chloe calls out to the crowd. ‘Cross My Heart’ is a shimmering indietronic mover that melds the dancefloor with the moshpit, whilst ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ opens with glitching PC buttons before evolving into an indie-power pop dream. This is Lime Garden with that look in their eyes, ready to run you down and pull you into their journey. ‘Like Clockwork’ rings off the walls like a tidal wave, ‘I Want To Be You’ erupts as one, while ‘Love Song’ is sung back by every person at the Sebright tonight, with a dedication to Ozzy Osbourne, whose passing was announced hours earlier.
Dork has never been about sitting still, and for Dork 100, it’s fitting that one of this magazine’s favourite bands points to what’s next: their most essential era. Get on that dancefloor – you’re not ready for how magnificent Lime Garden domination is about to be.
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