The Garden Conjur Up Fire In A Garden
Published
Orange County identical twins Fletcher & Wyatt Shears bring their two-piece, one of a kind sound to some backyard in East London.
With the word 'Dentist' visible as the venue name at 33 Chatsworth Road in Hackney, East London, you could already tell that the stage to soon host Californian twins Fletcher and Wyatt would be a different one to most.
After carefully treading down wooden steps that were only lit by candlelight, you wandered out into a small back garden equip with a blue and white striped tarpaulin overhead, a gathering of hipster youngsters puffing on their cigarettes and a rather small stage at the end up against a brick wall. It was a small and odd venue for a sold out gig, but a seemingly suitable DIY space for this unique bass and drum duo.
Each track not stretching past around two minutes long, you don't ever get the chance to lose interest, or amusement at the experimentation with song structures... I mean fuck em, what are those for anyway?
The Garden are another band I must praise very highly as they are doing what they want without any attempt to replicate something you've heard before and you gotta have a lot of respect for any musician doing that especially if they are clearly a beast at their instrument.
Plentiful in catchy dirty riffs, tight and raw drum rhythms, amusing lyrics and fullness of sound that is perfected to a T; The Garden are mesmerizing to watch live. They are great musicians, masters in their field or should I say garden. As they said themselves, the name of the band means not a lot, but at the same time, holds the similarity to an actual garden with its ever-changing and growing nature.
Even though the Shears brothers have punk/garage punk influences running through their music, as mentioned before they are unique to themselves as they harbour no restraint to just stick to that. Throwing limbs about the stage, both boys grab the microphones for their more 'dirty' tracks - encompassing elements of deep electronica, jungle and 90's hip hop that also run in the veins of their Vadaverse. It's an eclectic sound that you ain't never heard before.
If you walk into a Garden gig with preconceptions, expectations or rules of what a song should consist of, you're doing it all wrong. Be prepared to get lost in their universe of experimentation, theatrical stage jumping and crawling about, amusing nonsensical lyrical content and gurning funny facial expressions to match. It's a lot of fun when you get lost in The Garden and you want to just do it over and over again.
Photos and writing by Jo Wells
http://cargocollective.com/JoWells
