“Vada Vada” – this is the term the LA-based duo of brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears have coined to describe the music they make together as The Garden. If that doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard of before, that’s entirely the point – though occasionally you’ll hear get something a bit familiar, a hint of a touchstone, the music the duo makes is so outlandish in its synthesis of disparate pieces that it crashes out beyond whatever frame of reference one might try to place it in.
The Garden are currently enjoying a very much sold-out tour of the country in support of their most recent album, 2020’s Kiss My Super Bowl Ring. After multiple postponements, they’re finally getting to bring live performances of the album to the world, and they’ve got quite the reputation to live up to, both in intensity of performance and given the acclaimed acclaim of their previous record, Mirror Might Steal Your Charm.
Even the album cover is absurd and inscrutable – an impractically-shaped fantasy sword protruding like Excalibur from what appears to be a disposable camera photo of a trash pile. The music therein is much the same; from start to finish, KMSBR is a glorious, improbable collision of sound, from the opening atonal passages of ‘Clench to Stay Awake’ that turn on a dime into unintelligible screams and back again; through the jungly braggadocio of ‘Sneaky Devil’ or the title track; to the breakbeat closer, ‘Please Fuck Off’. At a relatively brief 35 minutes, it’s a whirlwind affair that will pick up an idea, toy with it, and set it aside just as easily – only for it to resurface more twisted later on.
Following a pensive solo guitar set by Tommy Midnight and a thrash-punk blitz by Oxnard’s Dr. Know – both of which are eagerly appreciated by the young audience to an equal degree, the duo takes the stage in near-total darkness. Lit almost exclusively by the flashlights of their fans’ phones, Wyatt emerges wearing a wide headband and studded jacket that situates him comfortably in the middle of the line between 80s Axl Rose and Metal Gear Solid character. Fletcher is ensconced in shadow behind his drum kit wearing a bright red shirt.
This being my first Garden show, I was curious how just two people would perform their songs live considering how many strange transitions, samples, and effects litter each track. While some components of most songs are pre-recorded, Wyatt plays a trio of guitars including bass and Fletcher handles the drumming to give the performance an extra punch. Fletcher plays with absolute abandon, reminiscent of NorCal legend Zach Hill of Hella and Death Grips in the way he plays wild passages that one might be tempted to think were programmed until you see his arms whirling away, creating them in real-time.
Occasionally the brothers will each grab a mic and move around the stage for a song, hyping up the crowd – Wyatt moves languidly, deliberately, perhaps channeling the time he and his brother spent as models. But despite having that same experience, when Fletcher comes out from behind the kit his untamed energy translates into leaps that see him grabbing one of the girders on the ceiling of the Space Ballroom and hanging there for a moment like a creature of the night, much more manic than his twin.
Their audience has more than enough energy to match; it’s hard to describe the sheer fervor that endures for the entire set. It’s a testament to the vitality of all-ages shows, that certain irreplaceable, youthful vigor that lets you mosh all night while simultaneously screaming every lyric to demonstrate your encyclopedic knowledge thereof. Many are wearing the trademark jester face paint referenced on the cover of many of the band’s releases – all white, save for black stars around the eyes. The room undulates from the very first note to the last, feet soaring over heads in the crowd.
Among those to make it to the front are a kid not more than 8 years old who smiles genially before jumping back into the crowd, and someone dressed as a grape, who loses a few purple orbs from their suit throughout the night as they go sailing through the air once and again. If the costume relates to The Garden canon, I must admit to not knowing the connection – but somehow a giant anthropomorphic grape doesn’t seem too odd, all things considered.
Clearly, The Garden are a full-on obsession, and why shouldn’t they be? A pair of tall, tan LA models, ostensibly built for public consumption, making some of the most thoroughly weird, challenging music in recent memory? It’s hard to imagine who wouldn’t be utterly fascinated by that – except perhaps the small cadre of parents and other chaperones in the anteroom who’ve elected to wait out the night there.
The night takes the band not only through the standouts of Kiss My Super Bowl Ring, but also a handful of older favorites, from Mirror… as well as their first full-length, The Life and Times of a Paper Clip. It’s startling to see how much the band has evolved since that album – its lengthiest track is a positively gluttonous 96 seconds, and all the songs are mostly guitar and drum affairs with short, impressionistic lyrical passages. Their writing and compositions have become so much more complex in the ensuing years, embodying that “Vada Vada” spirit which, according to their website, “represents total freedom of expression without boundaries or guidelines of any sort.”
It’s hard to envision a more unconstrained band than The Garden, and there’s a sense their next pivot could be anything – they could go full-on hyperpop with ease (Dylan Brady of 100 Gecs produced a handful of tracks from KMSBR), reinvent themselves as a modern-day Prodigy by leaning into the drum-and-bass elements they’ve favored of late, or churn out a screamy punk record. Whatever their next move may be, it’ll most certainly be with one eye ever angled to the fourth wall, ever-aware and ever-defiant of criticism, limitation, and most of all, conventional thinking.
Review and photos by Collin Heroux
