California-based twin brothers Fletcher and Wyatt Shears have impressed and confused the music world in equal amounts since they began their band The Garden in 2011.
The Garden are anything but a normal punk band, and they definitely have their own style, rocking an overtly feminine wardrobe and blasting songs just over a minute long about subjects as varied as eight-foot-tall men and the lifestyles of paperclips.
“As far as influences on our music, there are a lot of backbone bands that help the style we have, but as far as creating and progressing, most of the stuff comes straight out of us as empty-headed as possible, so it comes out genuine,” says Fletcher.
Listening to a full album by this band only enforces that they really do create their own style and sound, but this doesn’t mean that The Garden doesn’t hold any direct influences within their music.
“During high school, The Minutemen were our idols,” admits Fletcher about the legendary California jam punk band.
Finding new popularity, The Garden have obtained fan bases in all areas of the world, and they’ve been able to tour Europe and Japan in the process.
“The response is really, really good when we go over there, almost better than the US,” says Fletcher. “I’ve been wanting to go to Singapore lately.”
Living in the internet age and having accessibility to any music being released in the world opens up opportunities for even small bands like The Garden to tour the world. This new age of music also lets artists connect to one another with ease, and collaborations which might have been impossible before are becoming easier and easier to set up.
“If I could have a vocal, I would really love to have Del tha Funky Homosapien’s vocals because it’s a really strong voice, and I think it would be really cool to do something with that,” says Fletcher when asked who his dream collaboration would be with.
And The Garden aren’t just an interesting musical group; they also get into some pretty odd situations; take, for example, a tweet Fletcher recently wrote about Wyatt getting his arm stuck in a sewer.
“The traffic had to stop for a while, the cops showed up and had to get him out,” he laughs. “He kind of liked it; everyone was paying attention to him.”
The Garden
Friday, October 10
$15, Upstairs Cabaret
timbreconcerts.com
I like this new age of music