Garden of Evil Doers – retaW ni tuB ,retaW fo edaM
Everyone can get behind a good concept album, right? Rochester act Garden of Evil Doers‘s latest album, the enigmatically-named retaW ni tuB ,retaW fo edaM (RNBRFE), certainly falls into that camp. It’s a nine song collection of folk, rock, and noises that meld together fluidly – Almost like its namesake. Astute readers will notice that this album title, read backwards, reveals a hidden message – “Made of Water, But in Water.” These songs are inspired by water as a holistic entity – from the way it flows to its use as the base of a healing broth for you and your loved ones (which I want to think is a tongue-in-cheek reference to project mastermind Leaphe Ferm’s time as drummer of perpetual buffaBLOG favorite Kitchen, but I digress). Ferm explains a bit more:
First, the band name:
“Garden in the mysterious, cultivated, thinking of the future, delicious, full of little critters way… Evil Doers in the queer rebellious way”
And secondly, the inspiration behind RNBRFE:
“‘RNBRFE’ is a mirror album of my last EP ‘Made of Water, But in Water…’ It highlights water and it’s healing, transmuting, and transforming nature. From the depths of the ocean to a pot of healing soup from a loved one to cure your runny nose.
Suffice it to say, retaW ni tuB ,retaW fo edaM is now our album of the week. “Rip Tide // Runny Nose” kicks off this album with lovely, intimate vibes. Sounding like something that could fit comfortably on one of Sufjan Steven’s long-abandoned states series albums, gently plucked guitar is offset by the white noise of a room and rushing cymbal swells. It eventually builds into a percussion-led simmer, not too far from Slaughter Beach, Dog or Jeff Rosenstock territory. You can hear this gentle, folksy vibe throughout the album – like on “Rain, Listen” which has an emotionally charged apex that gets surprisingly intense without the use of distortion. Same for “Made of Water but in Water” – with pinging cymbals that sound like the rush of a faucet and a consistent, slinking bassline, it certainly fits into the project’s aquatic themes.
Elsewhere, Garden of Evil Doers experiments with a noisier approach. Song two, “Wishing Well” is a maelstrom of noise compared to its predecessor – opting for shoegaze and late ’90s emo sounds instead of the lull of an acoustic guitar. There’s also “First Snow,” which has the same about-to-fall-apart aesthetic as “Wishing Well,” bringing to mind early Cursive and Modest Mouse, or even their Rochester-based brethren in Attic Abasement. Meanwhile, the latter half of “Mists” might be the literal noisiest part of this album, with guitars so laden with distortion that they sound more like violent slashes of noise than a stringed instrument. It’s an interesting juxtaposition with the genuinely beautiful twinkling of this album’s softer songs – but water can be both tranquil and incredibly destructive, so this checks out in our book.
Lastly, an perhaps most poignantly, there is a strange sense of friendship, love, community, and overall positivity that radiates from the songs found on RNBRFE. It’s the little details and hyper-specific imagery – like the sound of clanking pots and chopped vegetables in “Soup Song” and it’s lyrical content of making soup for a sick lover. It’s certainly poignant in the sense that this is a shared experience that is rarely put into song… And somehow, “Making, at least enough for two,” “Meeting up at a window” to trade elixirs, and lamenting that you won’t be able to “swap spit” even though you feel like shit and your partner looks like shit is a shared experience that’s worth putting to music. Even harkening back to the album opener, there’s lines about the importance of camaraderie. “But I’m glad that we’re all friends / As we kick it every weekend building up what we’ve been” is such a nice sentiment – even when life’s got you beaten down, at least you’ve got your buds.
rewaW ni tuB ,retaW fo edaM is out March 6, 2026 via Raincoated Records.
Categorised in: Album of the Week
This post was written by Nick Sessanna