Interview

The Garden

Skype interview by Sander van Dalsum,
photos shot by Robin Stein in Seattle, USA

Describing The Garden automatically makes you want to reference the Olsen twins’ classic film It Takes Two. Though sharing a passion for fashion, fellow twins Wyatt and Fletcher Shears are nowhere near as cute and adorable as the Olsens. Then again, their psych-laden rock songs, produced with just their drums and bass, and loaded with a severe energy and punk spirit are far more entrancing than the Olsens’ “Gimme Pizza” will ever be. With Fletcher residing in his girlfriend’s house in Denmark, and Wyatt driving up to the studio in California, we decided to Skype the brothers to talk about first times, firstborns and first impulses.

Hey Fletcher! What comes to mind first when I say Wyatt?

Fletcher: Loser! No, uh, my brother, of course. I think of him with a straight face, I see him just standing there.

No typical memories of him?

Fletcher: He choked a guy recently . Some guy in Connecticut came after us during a show, and tried to like, get physical with one of our friends. And Wyatt came up behind him and choked him during our set. It was the owner of the bar, and he was heckling us up front, and then we were kind of fucking with him.

And Wyatt, what comes to mind first thinking of Fletcher? Any essential thoughts?

Wyatt: That he’s my brother, probably. Thinking of this part of our life, trying to move forward. I’m in a different country and he is in a different country. Just thinking of the present, really.

‘If we fight each other he would give up first, and I would try to win for pride reasons ’

Yikes! Which of you was born first?

Fletcher: That was me!

I see. Are you always that competitive?

Fletcher: I guess I do attack more. If we fight each other he would give up first, and I would try to win for pride reasons .

Is the firstborn right, Wyatt?

Wyatt: I think we’re both relatively competitive. We both like to make ourselves known, and make some sort of a statement in a way.

Let’s dive into past memories a little more. What’s the first memory of you as a twin?

Fletcher: There’s a lot. I fucking was in the womb with him; it could be as far back as that. Trying to ride bikes with him in the trailer park, with my grandparents. But that’s a really foggy memory. I remember getting hurt, but it was cool.

Wyatt: Couldn’t tell you, man! Maybe playing hockey, on roller-skates?

And what about the first song you recorded as brothers?

Fletcher: Before The Garden we were doing this little project called Identical Heads, and it was really just experimental bass and drums, and more on the math-rock side of things, and like punk. The first song we did as The Garden would be, I don’t know, I guess Fruits and Vegetables. Wyatt will probably know. It was our “hardest song at the time”. That was the song we’d hope the ten people who were watching us in the club would get into.

Wyatt: Pre-Garden there was one song called House; it was about solicitors. It was very vague, I just said: ‘stop ringing my doorbell’, and something like, ‘leave my house’, and it was just a very minimal song . I remember it being a little bit more hushed and quiet, less loud than the stuff we do now.

You coined Vada Vada as a genre to file your music under. Who came up with the Vadaverse first?

Fletcher: Originally, Wyatt and a couple of our friends came up with it one night in my garage. And I came home, and they were like ‘a dude, we got this really cool idea’. I guess they thought of it.

Wyatt: The name came to my friend Jack and me one day, kind of, but we were just conceptualizing things, and I don’t know. Everybody caught on a little bit, and it became something we were all proud to represent.

Lastly, which first time would you want to relive?

Fletcher: The first time I met my girlfriend was pretty nice, pretty memorable.

Wyatt: I would want to say some, but to be honest, I think everyone makes mistakes during their first times. I think you learn from them, and everything happens for a reason. I would just want to improve.

The Garden play on 13 March at V11, Rotterdam. The show is free for Subbacultcha members.