Ghost Mountain, The Garden - 4/1/26 - Fresno, CA - Tioga Sequoia

Ghost Mountain is the moniker of a vocalist, with a producer behind him playing the backing tracks. When he sings in a higher register it has a plaintive quality, like an emo singer. He’s wearing a shaggy, ripped hoodie that makes him look like a deathly spirit, which matches the skeleton decoration on his mic stand. Most of the time, though, he’s half singing, half rapping, maybe this is what mumble rap is? He doesn’t have a bad singing voice. He danced and moved for his whole set. Most of the beats are slower, like the first part of Contact by Daft Punk (what a great song by the way) before it reaches mach fuck. Hard to understand exactly what he’s saying. The absolute highlight of his set was when he covered Goodbye Horses, but in a slow industrial grungy sludgy way. I don’t think I ever expected to hear this song live, even with the heavier interpretation, which put a huge smile on my face. 

The Garden got started and I immediately felt something familiar. I was pretty sure I saw these guys 10 years ago or so, and they played at Strummer’s, but I don’t remember anything about their show. I’m pretty sure that I think I might have kind of liked them... but that’s conjecture from an unreliable narrator who has seen way too many shows to remember details about one that transpired that long ago. One thing is for sure, they’ve gathered quite a following since then. Now they’re playing at the beer garden with a ton of kids in black and white face paint in the crowd. Excellent people watching. 

The Garden City is a two person band made up of twins. One is on drums and the other plays bass. An excellent mosh pit broke out during the second song, and went strong all night, including a guy who started juggling in the middle of it. Lots of cool points for all the people there for the best mosh pit I’ve seen in a while. Great job kids. Most of their songs have guitar parts, but they don’t have a guitarist. The guitar is played on a backing track, but I wonder if one of them is actually the guitar player. Both of them are skilled musicians, and they need to be because some of their songs are played at punk warp speed, but not with basic drums or power chords on the bass. Their songs have some pretty intricate parts that they play with a lot of technical proficiency.

Midway through their set, they both forsake their instruments for multiple songs and teamed up to rap. They have the obvious chemistry you’d expect from twins, and this brings their already great stage presence to a higher level when they’re both rapping and playing off each other and flowing with each other.

The kids really love these guys and they’re not afraid to show it. The band fed off the great energy from the crowd which intensified their performance and in turn gave the crowd even more energy, resulting in one of those magical live performance positive feedback loops with the the band and crowd in a symbiotic relationship, each side asking for more from the other and rewarding each other with nourishing energy and vibes. All of it together made this an incredible show, and now I remember why I liked them the first time.