Garden of Humans Let Their Guard Down on ‘Cold’ 

On the back of their 2025 debut EP, If I Had A Say, and recent single ‘All This Time’, Leeds-based alt-rock band Garden of Humans take another step into the darkness, this time looking inward. Their latest single, aptly titled ‘Cold’, haunts its soundscape with a ghost that can be read as both anxious and angsty. 

Kicking off in a grungy Muse-like haze, alarmingly soft vocals beat ominously against the guitars, like a threat waiting to manifest. Beneath the calm exterior, lead singer Iggy shoots daggers as she sings, prodding her subject: “Tell me how, tell me why you play pretend”. Suddenly, the questions fired outward turn inward: “When you look at me, how the hell do you see gold?” The band open with a threatening aura that has become distinctly theirs, cemented on previous track ‘All This Time’, a song expressing anger at the world. This time, what initially sounds like a similar threat lurking beyond the song’s edges gradually reveals itself as something more intimate: self-doubt. Garden of Humans have masterfully crafted their own thematic world, only to dismantle it themselves with a striking bait-and-switch on ‘Cold’.

The track lands both powerfully and pleadingly, with Iggy admitting that she’s cold, attacked almost by her own existence. While guitar and drums still hit with an unmistakable alt-rock aggression, it only comes to accentuate the ache behind the wounded vocals. Garden of Humans exist at their most compelling when heaviness stops sounding defiant and starts sounding vulnerable. Lyrically, Iggy bargains with her own self-expression: scared of being all alone, willing to make her feelings unknown for the sake of someone else’s ‘ease’ and happiness. 

Only in the song’s bridge, though, does that agony crescendo both literally and figuratively with the repetition of “only wanna be your friend / I don’t wanna play pretend / Can we be six and eleven again”. For a song rooted in adult anxieties, Garden of Humans strips their internal conflict down to a pure desire for childhood simplicity. For honesty. ‘Cold’ undergoes a transformative journey, pedalling back to when the formerly accusatory, and later desperate, notion of “playing pretend” carried an altogether more innocent meaning. The words echo like a chant, swelling from quiet reflection into something anguished, with a powerful sustained note physically pulling Iggy’s plea back into the chorus.

Garden of Humans have created a song that forces you to reflect on what ‘cold’ even means. Something that might casually communicate emotional distance becomes the premise for what may be the band’s most intimate track yet. This ‘cold’ terrifies the narrator, not because of its carelessness, but because of how she lacks the words to express how much she truly cares. Behind it sits a burning desire for honesty and normalcy. 

For a song called ‘Cold’, Garden of Humans leave remarkably little emotional distance between themselves and the listener. Where ‘All This Time’ turned frustration outward, their latest offering directs that same intensity within, finding vulnerability beneath the band’s increasingly distinctive wall of sound. Together, the singles reveal two sides of Garden of Humans without sacrificing the identity binding them together, making whatever comes next all the more intriguing.

Review from Niall Mirza – @niallmirza2