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The Garden Mirror Might Steal Your Charm Epitaph

29.03.18

The Garden have managed to avoid strict categorisation in the seven years that they’ve been together so far. Still only 24 years old, for this third album the Californian twins don’t hold back when it comes to indulging their creative whims. The irony is that the curveballs almost become predictable as a result.

On the back of the last two LPs, you’d expect Mirror Might Steal Your Charm to place moments that genuinely thrill alongside some badly-advised missteps. Sure enough, that’s what we get. This is an erratic piece of work that works better when it sticks to power pop on tracks like Call the Dogs Out and No Destination (credit where it’s due, too, for the furious psych punk of Voodoo Luck).

Elsewhere, the dalliances with Busdriver-style alternative hip-hop – Make a Wish, A Message for Myself – are both garish and fall flat, whilst the less said about the messy, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink experiment Shameless Shadow, the better. You very much get the sense that The Garden are their own favourite band. You wonder, though, whether they’re anybody else’s.