If there is nothing else to say about The Weeds in Your Garden, it has a lot of heart. Fortunately, there’s a lot more to say about it. Weeds is Greg Hughes’ farewell and love letter to Orlando as he prepares to move to colder, rainier climes in Seattle. Hughes’ straightforward folk punk — almost to the point of being blunt — is strident, earnest, but, most importantly, winning.
Hughes wield the hard-won, cigarette-bedraggled voice that any good hardcore kid worth his tats sports, but his delivery swings between choir boy and rabble rouser, making lyrics like
A bartenders wanted at Turtle Bay,
I ride my bike right past the sign.
It’s the sketchiest bar,
in the sketchiest place.
I start to wonder how
long that place has been,
and who are the regular people there.
sound like an epic pronouncement. And that’s the point here — The Weeds in Your Garden documents all those moments that may seem mundane in a few years, but at 23, they loom large indeed.