Mac DeMarco and The Garden team up on 'Thy Mission,' which is so weird it's good
Indie-rock prince Mac DeMarco swaps out his innocent, river-man persona for a blond toupee and plaid pastel suit to reimagine a corrupt talk-show host in a recent collaboration with Wyatt and Fletcher Shears of The Garden on ‘Thy Mission.’ Eccentric wouldn’t do ‘Thy Mission’ justice. Wyatt...
Indie-rock prince Mac DeMarco swaps out his innocent, river-man persona for a blond toupee and plaid pastel suit to reimagine a corrupt talk-show host in a recent collaboration with Wyatt and Fletcher Shears of The Garden on ‘Thy Mission.’
Eccentric wouldn’t do ‘Thy Mission’ justice. Wyatt and Fletcher Shears, twin brothers who make up the Orange County punk duo The Garden, have developed a reputation for their music and videos alike. Boasting their self-proclaimed Vada Vada principle, a theory of unbridled creative intuition that encompasses nearly everything they do, the Shears consistently push the boundaries of what the masses can expect from a Youtube music video.
Take the visual for “California Here We Go,” where the twins don juggalo face paint and tacky pickup softball uniforms in a grunge rock adaptation of The Sandlot. In “Call This # Now,” The Garden take the Godfather route, casting Tommy Midnight as a naive pedestrian who falls under the guise of the Shears, still wearing face paint but trading out baseball uniforms for pinstripe suits in stereotypical mobster fashion.
The Shears’ proximity to the Hollywood shines through in their most recent Nadia Lee Cohen-directed visual project, a music video accompanying their track ‘Thy Mission (feat. Mac DeMarco).’ Set against the backdrop of a 1970s talk show (“The Vada Vada Show”) with a casted studio audience to boot, the video centers around the Shears and DeMarco, the latter smartly disguised as a talk-show host turned devil, the two costumes of which are comically similar. The Jay Leno-esque character begins the video as a fan favorite but ultimately goes up in flames, becoming the victim of a passively infuriated crowd after sufficient taunting and baiting.
It seems as though Wyatt and Fletcher tried their hardest to challenge even the best costume store’s inventory, sporting every getup from possessed nun to goth inmate to new wave punk rockers to wedding-goers (it wouldn’t be surprising if any of these outfits came from their personal closets). With each changing of character, corresponding title cards include allusions to religion and corruption: “WHO’S YOUR DADDY – ‘OUR HOLY FATHER IS OUR ONLY FATHER'” or “HELL HATH NO FURY… ‘…BUT I WILL HATH MY SAY!'” As far as the music goes, the Garden return in true Garden fashion, touting a track jammed with rough guitar and screeching whistles. Mac pitches his voice down on a hook, claiming “I can pay you twenty” but quickly changing his narrative in misleading TV-persona form. In all its weirdness, ‘Thy Mission’ fuses sardonic social commentary into a reckless and forceful punk track.
Check out the video for yourself below.