Three years ago, I squeezed into the corner of a comic book shop and watched a band take shape. It was midsummer at Alternate Reality Comics. The audience was a patchwork of emo-affluent kids, skate-acculturated teens, garage-band hopefuls and anyone else who wanted to hear something honest and loud.
On a makeshift stage between racks of graphic novels, the twin guitarists of Abbeys Garden (actual twins Liam and Jude Rita) tore through their opening set for Chicago-based emo band Summer 2000. That 20-minute performance felt like the promising start of something great. Liam Rita remembers it well.
“I was so frightened of the first-ever show we played. We were young. I think we were either still 17 or maybe freshly 18,” he recalls. “Especially playing to your age group, and the whole presence of social media and what’s cool and not cool, we were bound to be scared. Like, what if we bomb? What if they don’t like us?”
Fast forward to this October, when Abbeys Garden opened for California-based headliners Vs Self and Lagrimas at a sold-out weeknight show at Grey Witch. What grips you isn’t just the swelling audience but its intensity—bodies pitching forward, the voices matching the catharsis of the riffs, the band and crowd locking into the same moment, sharing vulnerability and movement.The band commanded the crowd as well as the stage.
“We don’t like getting put in any boxes … the whole emo, screamo. We just make music,” says Liam. “We’re just a very emotive band.”
Formed in 2023, Abbeys Garden is built on lifelong bonds. The band met in middle school, through a shared love for skating. Liam and his brother Jude share vocals and guitar duties, with David L. Jackson playing drums alongside Matthew Bartley on bass.
That lineage seeps into their sounds, while their affinity for heavier music and studio jams inject urgency into every chord.
“We only like surrounding ourselves with like-minded individuals, people who aren’t afraid to show who they are and be vulnerable,” says Liam. “We’ve all cried in front of each other. We’ve been naked in front of each other. It’s spiritual. We’re allowed to be ourselves with no backlash.”
The band’s 2023 EPs—Little Book of Love Poems and Pebble Beach—emerged in rapid succession, released only months apart.
“We were young and unemployed, so all we did was write music and hang out,” Liam says. “And when we scrambled enough money together, someone could use their parent’s car, and we’d drive down to the studio and spend nights on end there.”
The track “Sick Like a Dog” features raw vocals, melancholic instrumentation, memorable guitar melodies and bass lines that anchor not just rhythm, but also feeling.
Now the band is set to unveil new music and a new sound.
“I’m saying new sound, and it’s probably been done a million times before, but I guess it’s a new sound to our old catalog,” explains Liam. “Some songs are mean, they’re angry, some are sad. I just feel like it’s more whole.”
Abbeys Garden’s forthcoming single “Cat’s Game” is a tangled relationship metaphor about two people locked in silence, counting score, and neither wins. These songs are emotional and personal.
The next chapter for Abbeys Garden includes a full-length album titled Darla Badger, due “whenever feels appropriate,” according to Liam. When that day comes, we and the band’s growing fan base will be ready to indulge in their sounds of unbridled emotion.
ABBEYS GARDEN abbeysgarden.bandcamp.com
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