Vada Vada Vada

The Garden

The Garden
The Garden

The Garden is not really a band, but more like genre-rejecting performance art by bass-and-drums duo — the 21-year-old twins Wyatt and Fletcher Shears.

The brothers’ 2013 Burger Records release, The Life and Times of a Paperclip, is 18 minutes of driving fuzz guitar and absurdist lyrics that would make Ween jealous, including “Have you ever seen an apple walking around?” and “I see a muffin/ He’s looking at me.” All under a minute long, the odes to objects seem less like traditional songs and more like “Happenings,” the short spur-of-the-moment art pieces that were popular in the flower-power days.

And for bassist Wyatt Shears, that’s the point.

“For me, it’s just an experiment and it’s kind of like an art project,” he tells EW. “You can call it whatever you want because I don’t really want there to be any boundaries with it.”

Although the brothers don’t subscribe to a particular genre, The Garden’s potpourri of sounds draws on garage punk, surf rock, lo-fi and electronic. Really, the act can only be summed up with “Vada Vada” — a term the brothers coined early on to describe both their lifestyle and sound.

“It was kind of a snowball rolling down a hill,” Shears says. “One thing kept getting added to it. It kind of became our little thing.”

“Vada Vada” materializes in a 19-second song in which the brothers manage to sing “Vada” more than 20 times. The accompanying music video shows the brothers making peace signs, ordering fast food and showing off their signature theatrical performance style.

Shears is especially looking forward to bringing the Vada-verse to Eugene.

“To be honest, Eugene is strangely enough, on the West Coast tour, one of the standout places to go for me,” says Shears. “It just kind of left a good taste in my mouth.”

The Garden plays with DJ Genie Factory 8 pm Wednesday, Feb. 25, at WOW Hall; $10 adv., $12 door. All ages.