Lime Cordiale

Louis and Oli Leimbach know how to make a meal out of enmeshed worlds. The brothers grew up on an island just off the coast of northern Sydney before settling in the Northern Beaches, steeped in their English cellist mom’s love of French pop, their documentarian dad's anthropological perspective on Polynesian and Brazilian music, and a warm hippie vibe permeating their community. As Lime Cordiale, the Leimbachs learned to build from that endless musical swirl with their own endless charm, assembling two standout albums, a collaborative EP with Idris Elba, and countless live shows. And now on the upcoming Enough of the Sweet Talk (due July 26th via Chugg Music), the brothers find a deeper flavor of fusion, zigzagging around their sonic palate on a path all their own. 

Lime Cordiale’s first steps on their musical journey started when the Leimbachs visited family in the south of France as teenagers. Louis and Oli had played instruments with their mum since childhood—“We didn’t have much of a choice about it,” Louis laughs—and had each joined bands in school. But on this particular trip, the brothers spent most of their down time jamming and writing songs together, and decided to officially join forces. The aunt they were visiting runs a small music festival called Musique-Cordiale, so half of that name combined with half of their last name became Lime Cordiale. 

The project ramped up quickly upon their return to Australia. The brothers toured incessantly through Australia in the ‘10s, releasing singles and EPs that earned a rabid following. Their 2017 debut Permanent Vacation reached the charts in their homeland and earned rave reviews, with 2020's 14 Steps to a Better You amplified by a gold-tinged nostalgia. Their next release came as a massive surprise—even to the Leimbachs: a collaborative mini album with famed English actor Idris Elba. The duo learned that Elba had heard their music while filming a project in Australia, so they reached out to the Luther star’s team. The best part of the surprise: They got along so superbly that it turned into six full tracks, with Cordi Elba bringing more hip-hop and electronic flourishes into their sound.

The only way to build from that high, though, would be to get in touch with their origin story. 

“At first we envisioned our next album like a French menu—complete with entrees, mains, and desserts, every song referencing food or drink,” Louis laughs. Some of those references made it into the final blend, but the emotional resonance ran far deeper than the culinary. “The final result details the course of a relationship rather than a meal,” he adds. 

The album’s first single, “Facts of Life”, exemplifies that heady tea. The Leimbachs have always so effortlessly and purely captured the sugar rush of ‘70s psychedelics and glittery fun of the ‘80s, but Sweet Talk feels genuinely drawn through some swirling temporal portal. “Ice cream dripping down her chin again/ Going in bite for bite with me/ Turning lime green, that's the way the Kool-Aid comes, oh/ Put me out of my misery,” Louis floats over the gum-snapping bass and honeyed synth chords, injecting that too-familiar feeling of forbidden summer love. 

While their parents’ diverse interests established a base of French flavours and ‘80s pop that still powers Sweet Talk, the brothers pollinated that fertile garden with influences from modern indie pop: the nimble experimentation of Michael Kiwanaku, the twangy enthusiasm of Nathaniel Rateliff, the Artic Monkey’s’ swagger, and Charles Bradley’s soulful burn. Later, Oli studied at the Sydney Conservatory, and wound up bringing jazz musicians from his program into the studio for Lime Cordiale projects. Louis, meanwhile, studied fine arts, and has since gone on to design the band’s vivid album covers. 

The Leimbachs put their history on their sleeve elsewhere on “Colin”, a track that builds from Oli’s limber guitar picking, resonant piano chords, and soaring vocal sentimentality in the vein of Aussie legend Colin Hay. In fact, the song’s namesake also sings the track’s final verse. The skipping and hopping "Country Club", meanwhile, sounds most indebted to Cordi Elba, Louis dropping something akin to a self-aware diss track against bougie weekenders—complete with, of course, a clarinet solo from Oli.

The album is also a product of the band’s endless touring, the musicianship honed to its finest point. “We spent six months in Europe, and just spent the time on the bus and on planes workshopping and getting stuff demoed on a laptop,” Oli says. “And our stage presence is pretty weird, our outfits are pretty silly—we take our music seriously, but especially on tour we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We just want people to listen and have a good time.” While on tour, they stopped down to record music videos for the upcoming album—for instance, the clip for "Country Club" was filmed in the English countryside, the "Colin" video takes a turn through the Mojave desert in California, and an upcoming clip took a few days out of their schedule in Japan. "The album came together in different weird parts of the world, even down to Louis cutting the collage in the back of the bus, so we wanted to honor that impact," Oli says. But when it came time to put the tracks to record, they opted for the family homestead to maintain that intimacy and warmth, converting the living room to a makeshift studio. 

As Sweet Talk progresses, the tracks steadily build away from the troubled adoration of “Pedestal” (“She's on a pedestal/ So high and mighty, so terribly vain/ She's on a pedestal I'd take it politely, so bring on the pain”) through the who’s-to-blame one-two punch of “Imposter Syndrome” ("I'm living with imposter syndrome/ I'm just a colossal freakshow") and "The Big Reveal: Ou L'Hypocrite" ("You're obsessed, think you're the star of the show/ Now look who it is/ A hypocrite”) and to the climax, “Strangers”, where things have officially gone past their expiry date. 

A headrush of enchanting indie pop and transportative emotional journey, Sweet Talk is a tour de force that showcases how much Lime Cordiale both continues to remain tied to their roots and evolve exponentially. “As brothers, we have so much shared experience back to our hometown of Avalon,” Oli says. “And now we can push each other to grow through it, to share that with audiences in a way that scratches an itch and offers some closure.”

Lime Cordiale has amassed over 500 million streams on Spotify, 40 million Apple Music streams, and YouTube views exceeding 30 million. Their infectious performances and genuine, generous interactions with their fans have made them one of Australia’s most in demand acts, playing to wildly enthusiastic crowds across Australia and overseas.