Live Review: The Garden – 27th September, 2015 – Newtown Social Club, Sydney, Australia
2 min read
Thrilling. Visceral. Electric. So it was during The Garden’s brilliantly lean set at the Newtown Social Club, as twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears blasted through an hour of bassy, frenetic rock, with some electro punk oddity thrown in for good measure. It was exactly what you would want a show by these two consummate artists to be: immediate and hyper, but spaced out enough that it never felt like a blurry onslaught.
The pair proved to be stunning showmen. Though they spoke little between songs, they didn’t have to: the music truly did speak for itself. They played a number of cuts off the The Life And Times Of A Paperclip EP, but mixed up the old with the new, and treated the crowd to songs from their incoming haha album. Of them all, All Smiles Over Here got perhaps the strongest reaction from the crowd; its barked chorus was genuinely thrilling, and sent waves of energy through the relatively small but unbelievably lively audience.
At one point Fletcher Shears jumped up from his drum kit to join his brother at the mic, and the pair joined forces to unleash Cloak, the arch, blistering anthem that serves as one of haha’s many standouts. Their hair out, their clothes tight, frantically pacing up and down the length of the stage, they were a genuinely awe-inspiring sight, and commanded every single ounce of the audience’s attention.
In a recent interview they conducted with this site, Wyatt Shears expressed his hope that the pair would return to Australia. Anyone who was at their show last night will now undoubtedly be joining him in that wish. The show was so good that it’s hard not to find oneself begging for more.
