The Garden seems to come up when I least expect them to. I remember once having a conversation with a hairdresser about The Garden. We talked about our favorite tracks and how many of their concerts we had been to. Or I’m eating lunch by myself and someone comes up to me and says, “Hey did you see The Garden is in town this weekend?” This usually puts me right back into a Garden phase, blowing out my speakers in my car as I scream along to their discography.
The Garden is a garage and industrial punk, twin brother duo from Orange County with a prolific body of work at this point in their career. Wyatt and Fletcher Shears have been making music since they were 17 and have worked to sharpen their intense sound over the course of their body of work. Intense doesn’t fully encapsulate The Garden’s sound. Imagine someone made a hardcore punk song but for some reason there were ghosts and goblins making noise over the recordings and also the guy in the other recording room was making an EDM song. Sometimes it’s just flat out incoherent screamo. It sounds like a mess, but the Shears brothers have this music, which they’ve coined “vada vada,” down to a science.
Their shows are equally as interesting, with fans donned in white jester makeup throwing people to the side in the mosh pit. Their layered sound seems like it shouldn’t be as complicated when you look on stage to find that the jester-like brothers are only playing the bass guitar and drums. The last few albums they’ve been almost unrecognizable, with black and white clown makeup masking their faces, but on their most recent EP, the duo appears on the cover without their usual garb in normal face. “Six Desperate Ballads” is the band’s most recent release and like the title implies, features six new songs.
The EP opens up with a previously released single “Filthy Rabbit Hole,” a more upbeat and accessible song. It follows typical punk rock conventions with a simple few chord guitar riff, drums and overdriven bass.
The twins knew they couldn’t be that simple for an entire album though. They immediately lean deep into their vada vada roots on the track “The Nightmare.” It’s hard to pin down exactly what instruments are making the noise on the track, but it’s a mix of haunting synthesizers and drum machines with ghoulish howling alongside it. The lyrics are equally haunting and delivered in a possessed, monotone voice. They aren’t very uplifting either, as Wyatt sings: “I’m in the middle of this nightmare / Can’t you see? / There’s no room to breath / It’s useless.”
The next track “Man of the People” makes a U-turn with a much lighter feel. The highlight on the track is Wyatt’s bass guitar which drives the rhythms and melody of the song with its almost guitar like tonal qualities. It sounds like a track straight off of their 2020 release “Kiss my Super Bowl Ring.”
The fifth track “Open Hearted” is a clear highlight on the album. A much moodier track, “Open Hearted” is like if a punk rocker had to make a heartbreak song featuring graceful piano and overdriven bass. There’s also some Dean Blunt-esque guitar sounds in the back half of the track.
The closer is another previously released single “Ballet.” It opens up with a drum machine, bass and cackling sound effects then after the initial hook it goes into a head-bobbing club beat as Wyatt sings: “You can roll with the punches or limp away / I never glance back to yesterday.”
The EP is nothing revolutionary by the band. It certainly sounds like most of their other work but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s a nice new batch of songs to keep Garden fans’ thirst quenched. Their sound is also so unique that it doesn’t really matter if it sounds similar to something else they’ve released, it still is usually like nothing you’ve heard before.
Avery Pringle 
Tessa Balc 
Tony Le Calvez