Very excited to bring the great art-pop five-piece Garden Centre to Oxford for a headline show as part of their late spring UK tour! Support from Max Blansjaar.

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Garden Centre is a band formed out of necessity. In the beginning, its purpose was to tell the story of a group of people who found themselves drawn to an abandoned plant nursery in southern England. This project complete, the band turned its “guileless art-pop” (Guardian) towards the exploration of other topics: perhaps most notably energy drink consumption (2018’s Monster Energy) and holes (2021’s A Moon For Digging).

More recently, the band’s frontman, Max Levy, has been searching for a steady stream. A stream to watch sports on, a stream to glean information from, a stream to wade in. Searching For A Stream, Garden Centre’s fourth and newest full-length album, is populated by narrators whose immediate realities are clouded by nostalgia and superstition, turbid with the glory and pain of other people. A train guard who usually takes pleasure in telling jokes over the intercom can no longer spin his pain into a punchline (he’s just seen a horrific injury on TV). A man, asleep at his desk, sings frantically and fondly about his own personally curated hall of fame. A kid interrupts an important conversation with the sound of his dirt bike. Levy’s voice throughout is as urgent as a sea urchin sting, piercing scattered memories and mundanities in search of a deeper connection: a stream, the promise of resonance.

The band has toured extensively across the UK and abroad with the likes of Dry Cleaning and Porridge Radio (with whom Garden Centre shares members), and has also found a fan in Frank Ocean, who has playlisted Garden Centre multiple times on his popular Blonded radio show.

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Max Blansjaar was born in Amsterdam, raised in Oxford, and recorded his debut album in Brooklyn. In late 2017 he started to experiment with his unique brand of lo-fi pop music, capturing attention on the DIY scene with a seamless combination of chunky grunge guitars, jagged samples and intelligent, witty lyricism—since then, his energetic live shows have seen him support acts including Personal Trainer, Young Knives, and Jeffrey Lewis.

His debut album False Comforts, produced by Katie Von Schleicher and Nate Mendelsohn (Frankie Cosmos, Sam Evian, Caroline Says), was released in 2024, drawing support from outlets including BBC 6Music, The Post, and Brooklyn Vegan.

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This show is suitable for all ages. Under-14s must be accompanied by an adult.