The Garden is one of the most unique and eclectic bands to hit the music scene in recent years.
Their newest Sept. 8 album, “Horseshit on Route 66,” is easily their most ambitious and eccentric yet.
With their unmistakable jester makeup and their aggressive mixing of different music styles and genres, they have been turning heads with every release.
The duo of identical twins Fletcher and Wyatt Shears originally started with only playing the drum and bass on their 2013 debut album “Life and Times of a Paperclip.”
They have since gone on to include a wide variety of instruments. The band is most known for their incredibly catchy tracks like “Call this # Now,” and “Thy Mission.”
The Shears twins refer to their distinctive blend of genres as "Vada Vada," which is also the name of their new independent record label, with this new album being its first release.
Wyatt Shears described Vada Vada as “an idea that represents pure expression, that disregards all previously made genres and ideals,” according to a Flux Magazine article dated Sep. 1 2015.
Flux Magazine is an independent publication focused on arts, technology, culture and music.
The twins consider Vada Vada to be the official genre of the band, as well as the key philosophy behind their songwriting.
2020’s “Kiss My Super Bowl Ring” serves as a precursor to the genre-bending insanity of their latest effort, but is significantly less chaotic in its approach to its songwriting.
Where “Kiss My Super Bowl Ring” was full of catchy guitar licks and a significant focus on clever lyricism, “Horseshit on Route 66” is instead treated as Frankenstein’s monster of musicianship.
“Horseshit on Route 66” is a punchy drum machine-filled city pop track that doesn’t shy away from a post-hardcore style breakdown near the end.
“Puerta de Limosina” is easily the loudest track on the album. Its distorted vocals and demented guitar lines make it akin to the late ’90s noise rock bands of the pacific northwest.
In direct contrast, “What Else Could I Be But A Jester” ditches overdriven bass guitars and punk grooves for dubstep wobbles and a thick industrial drum beat.
“Freight Yard” is easily one of the catchiest songs the band has ever written, featuring a sampled big beat drum line, and a hook that will be stuck in your head for hours.
The only thing in common with any of the 11 tracks is Fletcher Shear’s unmistakable voice. Though the vocals take a backseat in the mix of the album, they are the sole element tying the tracks together.
“Horseshit” is an unwavering 24 minute experience that goes by in 30 seconds. Not a single track is longer than three minutes, and the amount of styles covered within each track is quite near ungodly.
More than anything, the short runtime of the album feels like the duo are trying to break as many boundaries they can in as little time as possible.
“Horseshit” moves at breakneck speeds and wants you to know it, and it spends every minute trying to keep you on your toes more than it reasonably should.
The album’s greatest hindrance is that its unbound creativity often leads to making it feel directionless. Many of the songs have great ideas that are never fully realized, for the sake of indiscriminately mashing random genres into them.
That being said, as an overall album, the best songs greatly overshadow the mediocre ones. As easily forgotten as shorter tracks such as “Haunted House on Zillow” are their titles are funny enough to warrant listening to at least a couple times.
Whereas The Garden’s previous albums could be categorized with an absence of a discernible genre, “Horseshit” is a giant clown makeup-painted middle finger to corporate record labels and stale alternative rock.
Only time will tell if “Horseshit on Route 66” becomes a classic or a strange blip in the constantly evolving sound of the band. But it is a testament to the twins’ philosophy and makes me terrified to think about what they will do next.
