Inside The Garden’s sold-out spectacle at Union Transfer
Orange County, California duo The Garden rocked a sold out show at Union transfer Sunday night, and fans came prepared. Patrons flocked to the venue in full costume and makeup as jesters, a recurring visual theme in The Garden’s imagery, music videos, and live performance. Energy was high, with fans screaming the lyrics to their favorite songs back to the band, barking like dogs to fill the gaps between vocals during the song “Call the Dogs Out,” moshing, crowdsurfing, and even as one bold fan did, sneaking past security to jump up on stage, giving the band’s Wyatt Shears a friendly smack on the ass, and stage diving back into the crowd.
If that first paragraph didn’t scare you away, you might be thinking, “Who are The Garden?” You’re not alone. Brandon Cruz, singer of Dr. Know related to that sentiment, saying that when they got asked to go on this tour he had no idea who they were, but when he asked his 21-year-old daughter Ruby if she knew the band she said, “Are you kidding me?!”
So if this is your first time hearing of the band, here is a short introduction:
The Garden are an experimental rock duo from California made up of identical twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears. With influences from punk to metal to jazz to pop to rap, their musical sound doesn’t fit into any existing genre, so much so that they created, and are accredited with creating, their own genre of music called vada vada – “a term that represents freedom of expression without any boundaries or guidelines of any sort.” They currently have four studio albums and four EPs.
Words truly don’t do The Garden justice, so I’d recommend listening to a few songs and diving straight in if this review and set of photographs intrigued you. My top three tracks are “Thy Mission,” “California Here We Go,” and “Egg.” Those are the tracks I sent to my editor John (who had also never heard of The Garden) to convince him this would be a good show for consideration, so maybe they’ll also sway you!
