One of Australia’s most popular bands brought personality, humour and style to the intimate setting of Rescue Rooms...
Lime Cordiale are one of Australia’s most popular bands, with nearly two million Spotify monthly listeners and an ARIA Award for Best Australian Live Act. However, they are less well-known in the UK, which gave me a fantastic opportunity to see such an accomplished band in the intimate venue of Rescue Rooms. I was excited for a night of fun sing-along tunes, but they far exceeded my expectations!
Support came from Willow Robinson, who delivered a chilled guitar sound that mirrored that of Lime Cordiale. Covers of Feeling Good and Heart-Shaped Box were appreciated by the growing crowd, but some of his original songs began to feel a little similar to each other, and some of the crowd lost a bit of attention towards the end of his set. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable half-hour from a clearly talented guitarist.
The party really started when Lime Cordiale entered the stage. They approached the task of performing a gig completely unlike any act I have seen before, and at times it was more like a circus/comedy act, with some great music thrown in.
The gig started with all band members striking a pose at the front of the stage, before jubilantly greeting the crowd and each other. All dressed in flamboyant suits, and the drummer sporting a cowboy hat, it was a sight to behold. Opening song On Our Own got the crowd going, swiftly followed by debut album hit Naturally. An hour and a half of laughs, surprises and crowd interaction ensued.
Lime Cordiale are fronted by brothers Oli and Louis Leinbach, and their natural and charismatic chemistry was great to watch. They both very much enjoyed pulling funny expressions whilst singing, dancing bizarrely and generally not taking anything particularly seriously!
This was a facade though, as despite giving off the impression that everything was jokily improvised, the musical performance was impeccable. The brothers share the vocals, although younger brother Louis takes the lions share, which does seem sensible as he seemed to have the smoother voice.
Many acts that possess such an entertaining duo as the Leinbach brothers would see the rest of the band hide to the back of the stage, but Lime Cordiale has even more personality to offer than just the Leinbach brothers. Keyboardist Felix Bornholdt was a fan favourite, with a particularly enamoured section of the crowd chanting his name numerous times throughout the gig.
A nice touch was the way that each band member was given their moment in the spotlight – drummer James Jennings had a drum solo to start an instrumental unreleased song, whilst trombone and guitar player Nick Polovineo was on stage on his own as he played guitar on an electro-inspired intro, and Bornholdt was the first out on stage after the encore to play a keyboard solo which morphed into Robbery as the rest of the band joined him.
Crowd interaction was plentiful between songs and was genuinely funny - a breath of fresh air after hearing countless artists think "How are you doing Nottingham?" counts as crowd interaction! Many indie bands would benefit from going to a Lime Cordiale show and taking a leaf out of their book; you don’t have to just play your songs then walk off stage, there’s so much scope for injecting creativity and personality in a gig!
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