It may come as a surprise that the two identical twin brothers from Orange, California, Wyatt and Fletcher Shears of
the Garden, spent two years making their intentionally tongue-in-cheek 2013 release,
The Life and Times of a Paperclip. Lyrically, these are barely developed ideas, simple enough that they could have come from the mind of an actual paperclip. Wyatt, the singer and bassist, looks at an object, mentions that he sees it, and then bellows the line for the duration of a song. The sole lyric of "The Apple" is "Have you ever seen an apple? Have you ever seen an apple walking around?" In "I See a Moth" he tirelessly recites "I see a moth and he's looking at me," and "Eight-Foot-Tall Man" repeats "I see an eight-foot-tall man, he's walking out of the forest" over and over. Same for "Goose Egg" ("I see a goose egg, I spy a goose egg"), "Bird's Nest" ("I'm waking up in a bird's nest"), and so on. The bare-bones, no wave flavor of the production is equally simple, built entirely off of the agile drumming and bass playing of the twins, which is impressively filled with telepathic starts and stops and disjointed song structures. The duo's stated influences of
Saccharine Trust and
the Minutemen are felt in the drive and energy, and the feel of the slapback reverb in the bass amplifier might bring to mind
the Cramps, so soundwise, there are some cool aspects. Still, when a band seems so intent on coming across as apathetic, it's hard for anyone to care, let alone make an effort to connect. ~ Jason Lymangrover