Photos by Ava London & Dylan Simmons
Peachy San Diego is a love letter to all of SoCal and its unique, flourishing alternative music scene that sometimes takes a backseat to the dominant, mainstream music industry of Los Angeles. The annual, one-day mini-festival highlights San Diegoan artists and local alternative bands, hosted by the iconic rock venue SOMA. With past headliners including TV Girl, Wavves, and Destroy Boys, Peachy San Diego always entices crowds with a genre-spanning lineup of iconic artists.
Growing up in the Inland Empire and Orange County, respectively, Ava and I share an appreciation for the many alternative spaces SoCal has to offer, and eagerly made the three-hour trek from Los Angeles to San Diego for the festival. Here are some of our highlights from Peachy San Diego 2025!
George Clanton by Ava London:
Having seen George Clanton nearly a year ago at a music festival in San Luis Obispo, I was familiar with the electro-pop singer’s eccentric shtick: offbeat ad-libs color the performance of a man disposed to pour any and every available liquid atop his neon-green hair. This time around, though, rather than playing up the attractiveness of a confidante in the crowd as he had done in SLO, Clanton’s vocal fixations veered more wholesome, given his own exuberance to be reuniting with San Diego’s harmonious coast.
“Shout out San Diego High School! Shout out San Diego Christian Church Youth Camp!” he cried, before turning his attention to his “Mommy and Daddy” with whom he’d just reunited: “Mommy told me to picture everyone — over the age of 18 — naked!”
George Clanton’s past work has been labeled vaporwave, a retrofuturist genre and DIY subculture focused on projecting self-referential and nostalgic art. Clanton’s own favorites playlist encompasses ‘80s shoegaze and dream pop to ‘90s R&B and electronic music, inspirations which manifest in his own distinctly retrospective sound; internet-age production techniques revive the sounds established by an analog society.
Outside of gauzy synths, punchy drums, and resonant keys, Clanton’s thirty minute set was a lively performance in and of itself, with a teeming crowd miraculously parting for the singer as he clambered off the stage. Frequently pausing to address the crowd from the barricade’s built-in scaffolding, Clanton was larger than life as he half walked, half crowd-surfed into the pit, an unmistakable shock of green hair at times all that could be used to determine his whereabouts. A veritable light show positioned behind Clanton and his synthesizer furthered the entertainment value of the set, diffusing sporadic bursts of light in time with hypnotic, swirling beats.
“Ooh Rap I Ya” off 2023’s record of the same name acclimatized listeners to a zippy, surreal atmosphere, dismembered by Clanton’s screamy rasps, which he emitted as he swayed and staggered across the stage, beer can in hand. For all of Clanton’s performed drunkenness during “Ooh Rap I Ya,” his rendition of 2018’s “Dumb” kicked off in the bounds of lo fi, melodic and restrained. The song quickly devolved into the anticipated frenzy though, with Clanton hopping around with his guitar, his singing transitioning from subdued to raucous.
Clanton’s success as a one-man-act was derived from his eccentric, engaging crowd work as much as it was his distinct vaporwave sound; his singular showmanship easily won over the crowd.
Puzzle by Dylan Simmons:
Puzzle is the experimental side project of Fletcher Shears, better known as one-half of punk duo The Garden alongside his twin brother, Wyatt. While The Garden leans more toward classic punk sounds and heavy instrumentation, Puzzle is a relatively reduced electronic project, characterized largely by Fletcher Shears’s instrument of choice: the drums.
As Fletcher Shears walked onstage to frenzied cheers, his long, bleach-blond hair was instantly recognizable, standing out conspicuously from the rest of his band, despite them sporting matching black pinstripe suits in Puzzle’s signature style. Shears performed the vocals throughout the setlist, and, uninhibited by his usual drum kit, he was free to jump and somersault across the stage during upbeat instrumental breakdowns. His energy — manifesting both in his at times aggressive vocalizations and his flurry of movements across the stage — was contagious, inciting mosh pits throughout the excitable crowd.
As a one-off performance, Shears’s setlist spanned the decade-long evolution of his project rather than just fixating on more recent releases. Tracks like “Poison Oak” off 2023’s The Rotten Opera were met with equal levels of enthusiasm from the crowd as deep cuts like 2016’s “What She Might Say to Me.” The crowd was undoubtedly full of dedicated The Garden fans, an especially pervasive and cult-like fanbase in Southern California that follows the band’s main project as well as their side endeavors, regulars at their frequent shows in the area.
Before launching into unreleased track “Bankrupt,” Shears teased an upcoming album, which received appropriately enthusiastic cheers from the zealous crowd. His setlist also featured fan favorites “Loose Cannon” and “Chicken Shit,” to which the audience seemed to know every word. Shears finally closed his set with “I Saw an Angel” and “love is a place to hide,” two ethereal, hyperpop ballads that incited relentless jumping and moshing from the audience as a final farewell.
Fletcher Shears’s distinct side project — with its unique drum beats, electronic melodies, and hyperpop-infused experimental style — warrants as much praise as his work produced under The Garden. His stage presence provided unmatched levels of energy that was eagerly reflected by the crowd in a fleeting moment of intense connection between performer and fan.
Enjoy by Ava London:
Enjoy — Wyatt Shears of The Garden’s solo endeavor — operates on a nostalgia entirely disparate from George Clanton’s vaporwave. Whereas Clanton’s pièce de résistance is sonic inspiration unearthed from decades past, Enjoy’s intrigue manifests in a perpetually evolving, bass-heavy groove — a one-off punk sound so highly original that its evolution is feasible only through self-actualization. That’s not to say Shears shies away from embracing historic modalities of expression; a highly unusual amalgamation of funk, punk, and drum and bass inspirations have rendered Enjoy’s sound groundbreaking since its inception in 2010.
A tiger-stripe bass strap offered the only suggestion of vibrance as Wyatt Shears sauntered onstage, the picture of nonchalance in a severe black trench coat. Favoring moody mossy, twilight, and burgundy lighting, Enjoy was a metaphysical scowl: a brooding, invulnerable assembly intent on playing loud fast. With Shears on both bass and vocals, the configuration of the average Enjoy song largely hindered him from breaking concentration. When Shears wasn’t spitting breakneck lyrics into the mic, he was mercilessly swinging his bass, even as he continued to pluck biting bass chords..
A man of few words, Shears’s archetypal southern California drawl was just perceptible as he declared, “This song is called ‘Small Car Big Wheels,’” A momentary lapse in performance ensued as the band adjusted their instruments, permitting Enjoy’s band to execute the spacy, stand-alone track. The song’s vastly distinctive fun-house sound featured cartoonish gunshots and twangy guitars backing Shears, whose voice adopted a lethargic, rap-like cadence.
A personal favorite, “Ring Your Bell” employed a raucous punk tempo, dichotomizing “Small Car Big Wheels” with its simplistic aggression. Drumsticks flashed and knees jostled as Enjoy blurred, entering a transient state where identifying isolated sounds and movements became impossible. Unsurprisingly, the song’s breakneck tempo was conducive to eddying mosh pits — swirling whirlpools demanding bodies for their proliferation.
“I’m gonna play some prehistoric shit!” Shears exclaimed before launching into “I’m Sorry,” a bare-bones track off Deep Cuts (2011-2016) featuring heavy reverb and transparent lyricism exploring the sentiment of failure. Oscillating between clipped and protracted vocals, light and heavy instrumentation, “I’m Sorry” taken as a whole can be interpreted as the essence of Enjoy: smooth basslines and even rhythms make the track borderline danceable.
The unexpected addition of the acoustic guitar in songs off 2023’s Exploited epitomized an unbridled sense of exploration, venturing into the realm of southern aestheticism while very much preserving a SoCal punk sound. The final performance of the night, “Make a Dent in the City” was one of several fan favorites, dominated by havoc wreaked on the cymbals with moments of acoustic bliss yielding to Shears’s gritty vocals.
Enjoy’s set was a testament to Wyatt Shears’s creative vision left uninhibited, and to the unique advantages an artist may enjoy when they stop taking themselves so seriously. While Enjoy’s comprehensive setlist may have highlighted his sonic variations throughout the years, the aggressive energy with which each song was veritably attacked was ultimately consistent.
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