The Garden embark on a different route with new album, 'Haha'

The Garden is Fletcher and Wyatt Shears, the Orange County twins who've been stirring a name for themselves for their convention-defying steez and live sets since 2011.
At just 20 years of age, they have shared over 40 releases between The Garden and their respective solo projects via bandcamp and invented 'Vada Vada'- their own genre/philosophy/movement.

Fusing elements of punk, electronica, pop and hip hop, their self-inflicted Vada Vada is innovative and clever, and equally pretty fucking weird. Their new album, simply titled 'haha', expands the genre even further and is out on October 9th via Epitaph/Burger Records.

In typical The Garden style, 'haha' is a disjointed compilation of seemingly-too-many tracks, but the 17 songs don't exceed 35 minutes and they really do work. The short song theme from their previous work is sustained, crashing from one track to the next without giving the listener enough time to fully digest what the hell just happened. The instrumentals are catchy, the lyrics are as strange and unpredictable as ever and, while it’s impossible to deny how good their 2013 ‘The Life and Times of a Paperclip’ was, their follow-up seems much more mature and evolved.

The album is much more experimental than the last, trialling different instruments and styles and adding more layers between the usual just-bass-and-drums set up. Title-track, 'haha', channels Puzzle (Fletcher’s solo project) with its use of synths and is immediately appealing with its simple yet catchy melody. Nonetheless, some of the tracks wouldn't feel out of place on the previous record. Take ‘We be grindin’’, for example, which can be recognised from their past set lists: the cyclical drums and dark bassline are reminiscent of the twins’ older stuff.

It's clear that The Garden are embarking on a slightly different route with this album and they sure are doing a good job at it.

Be sure to see them live when they hit Europe later this month.

Words by Saf Bugel

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