Photos by Ava London & Dylan Simmons. Words by Ava London.
Wyatt and Fletcher Shears’ power manifests in an ability to construct a subcultural echo chamber, defying the odds of manufacturing a festival space tailored to an alternative crowd. The twin’s punk two-piece, The Garden, was set to headline One Strange Night in California, reconnecting with Orange County punk rock roots. In line with 2023’s inaugural One Strange Night, the single-day festival traversed generations and genres, paying homage to hardcore’s early days with legacy punk acts FEAR, Ceremony, and L7, while offering up the EDM duo Snow Strippers and SoCal punk act The Garden to represent the modern underground.
The dynamic bill culminated in hordes of fans from all walks of life, winding merch lines peppered with clown makeup à la the Shears twins’ signature look, and a plethora of refashioned black clothing in the punk tradition. The Observatory’s outdoor festival grounds saw a mundane venue parking lot transformed into a haven for self-expression and community, echoing the Vada Vada ethos Wyatt and Fletcher Shears have embodied since the early 2010s: total freedom of expression without boundaries or guidelines of any sort.
I entered the festival grounds just before early 2000s punk band Ceremony was set to hit the stage. Ghosting through the tattooed and the freshly intoxicated, I arrived in time for a glamorous, brazen set at times employing kitsch new wave synths, at others embracing the abrasive guitar tradition of punk rock. Vocalist Ross Farrar accompanied screamy vocals with a bug-eyed lunacy, throwing himself to the floor, lassoing a limp microphone as he skipped and staggered. Guitarist Anthony Anzaldo’s rebellion manifested in skintight leather pants, and in a proclamation of excitement at playing for a crowd full of makeup-ed faces for the first time. Anzaldo strutted and kicked, brandishing his guitar like a shotgun, a ball of punk energy spitting across the stage.
The crowd’s response to Snow Strippers was emblematic of a recent fascination with probably the best thing to come out of Tinder: the union of Tatiana Schwaning and Graham Perez in holy music matrimony. Capitalizing on the recent indie sleaze resurgence, the electronic duo’s sound could be classified as trashy, but still decidedly infectious. Schwaning struck a balance between a feminine and grungy performance style to accompany their electropop rave beats, cheekily skipping around the stage in striped micro shorts, her face often obscured by her waist-length hair. Perez predominantly found solace behind the deck, making infrequent appearances at the lip of the stage to dance behind Schwaning. With an incessant strobe and sporadic bursts of opaque smoke, Snow Strippers created the controlled chaos of a club scene for one. All eyes were on Schwaning as she gyrated and twirled, emitting reverb-drenched, repetitious vocals.
The highlight of the night was undeniably The Garden, who delivered a set rife with deep cuts and crowd favorites. Despite having witnessed The Garden’s onstage brilliance myriad times, I am always deeply impressed by the Shears’ meticulousness in puzzle-piecing together a balanced setlist from an endless discography. One Strange Night would see the duo burn through cult classics “Call the Dogs Out,” “Egg,” and “Thy Mission,” high-energy punk tracks like “Ballet,” “OC93,” and “Clay,” and the over-a-decade-old “The Gorilla” and “I See a Moth.” Donning the signature Garden jester makeup reflected back in the gleaming faces of dozens of fans painted white, Wyatt and Fletcher Shears demonstrated uncanny stamina: when Fletcher was not behind his drum kit, he was a ghostly apparition somersaulting across the stage, serving as a visual foil to a black-clad Wyatt who flickered in and out of the stage’s murky haze. A birds-eye view would have revealed a multitude of whirlpool moshpits widening as the night continued, gradually absorbing fans until the Observatory’s standing space was more mosh pit than not. Unsurprisingly, Wyatt and Fletcher Shears delivered sonic performances equally as exceptional as their physical performances. Their collective vocals were gripping and nasty, with Wyatt delivering tight, punchy basslines and Fletcher pounding out primal, rapid-fire beats.
There’s something so special about an Orange County show from The Garden, who have contributed significantly to the continuation of the Orange County punk tradition dating back to the mid-1980s with acts like The Adolescents and T.S.O.L. The Garden’s punk radicalism is uninhibited creative expression, which finds the pair blending modern synthesizers and quirky samples with the emboldened spirit foundational to punk rock. For the second time, Wyatt and Fletcher Shears traversed genres to unify 2025’s underground scenes, creating a uniquely cherished community-sense in The Observatory’s festival space.
