more garbage

“… sounding like nobody else. red feathers and black tar. – Shirley Manson

This is about the band Garbage.

I saw Garbage play at a small place called The Chameleon Club in the early 90’s.

They were frickin’ awesome. Shirley Manson is as good live as she is on a cd and the band can replicate that dark grinding industrial sound perfectly in concert. Not incredibly loud but you still felt bruised from the music when you left the club.

Anyway. They just released their fifth studio release called “Not Your Kind of People” after a seven-year hiatus.

The new album was recorded in a basement.

Most people know Garbage because of female lead singer Shirley Manson. The others are … Steve Marker (guitars/keyboards), Duke Erikson (guitars/keyboards) and Butch Vig (drums). The new record is produced by Garbage, engineered by Billy Bush, and mixed by Butch Vig and Billy Bush. But everyone recognizes their music for its dark lower octave driving sound. They don’t write traditional happy songs <for gods sake … one of their biggest songs was “I am only happy when it rains>. Anyway. I kind of <in an odd way> think of them as the industrial rock version of Depeche Mode. Same dark overtones with heavier instrumentation <instead of synthesizers>.

Back to their new album.

“Years-worth of pent-up music came out in some bizarre ways- bleary cell phone memos became real songs, conversations turned into lyrics, and new computer gizmos inspired wicked tangents,” said the band in a statement. “Ghosts came in, had their say. Everyone brought ideas, and everyone fought their corner.  At the end of the day it all gets shoved through the four-way brain filter that is Garbage and it ends up sounding like nobody else. Red feathers and black tar.”

Similar to some other bands from this past era they struggled with fame and had some band/personal issues.

Shirley explains their seven year break:

We started out on a really small indie label, Almo Sounds, and we were kind of the priority band on the label. But they went under after a few years, and our contract got sold to a bigger company. So instead of being on this cool indie label where we knew everybody, we found ourselves on Universal and Warner Bros. It all became very impersonal, and we’re not giant cash generators. We’re not Katy Perry or something like that. And we never wanted to be, really. But if you’re not generating that kind of cash for a company like that, you’re basically invisible.

Anyway.

Here is the first release.

Blood for Poppies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OdTBCgqRt4

And I thought I would include my favorite Garbage song of all time … #1 Crush.

#1 Crush: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJbXjIEP6rM&feature=related

Great band with what I believe is a truly unique sound (and most of you know I rarely use the unique word).

Welcome back Garbage.

Written by Bruce