GARBAGE
GARBAGE:
Duke Erickson: Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Keyboards, Synthesizers
Shirley Manson: Vocals, Guitar
Steve Marker: Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Keyboards, Synthesizers
Butch Vig: Drums, Programming, Synthesizers
Eric Avory: Bass Guitar on "Empty," "Blackout," "Magnetized," "We Never Tell," "So We Can Stay Alive" and "Amends"
Justin Meldal-Johnson: Bass Guitar on "Night Drive Loneliness" and "Even Though Our Love Is Doomed"
Written, Arranged, Performed and Produced by Garbage
Released June 10, 2016
I have to keep reminding myself of how old the members of Garbage actually are.
Where frontwoman extraordinaire Shirley Manson at age 49 is very close to my own age, it amazes me to think that guitarist/keyboardist Steve Marker is 57, drummer Butch Vig is 60 and guitarist/keyboardist Duke Erickson is the oldest member at 65. I make this observation not for any ageist reasons but for the fact that the music Garbage has delivered for over 20 years now, feels so of the moment and sonic zeitgeist--and therefore, so very youthful--as they have consistently created music I imagine thundering in headphones down the high school hallways as well as the trendiest and underground night clubs. It has felt to me that Garbage has spent their career cultivating a Bowie-esque persona (for Manson definitely, as well as for the band as an entity), that aside from some sneak peeks here and there within the songs themselves (that is, if one ONLY knew the band through the songs, albums and videos), we have never really had a strong sense of who the members are as real world human beings.
The eponymously titled debut album (released August 15, 1995) gave birth to the character of the "Supervixen" where "Version 2.0" (released May 11, 1998), was as advertised, an updated saga fleshing out the character and how she viewed herself and the world. Where "Beautiful Garbage" (released October 1, 2001), offered a more melancholy and pop driven detour, "Bleed Like Me" (released April 11, 2005) and "Not Your Kind Of People" (released May 14, 2012) both arrived with a metallic roar that presented the band as invincible warriors of our increasingly divisive socio/political landscape as well as on the dance floors, nightclubs and rock shows.
With the arrival of the band's sixth album "Strange Little Birds," I was honestly surprised and even taken aback. For all of the state of the art power and muscle of the music, the album is a moodier, often quieter yet no less emotionally intense affair, featuring the band at their most introspective, vulnerable and often fragile, which in and of itself displays a different kind of strength, the very kind that arrives with aging, a greater consciousness of one's impending mortality and the knowledge that arrives with both.
"Strange Little Birds" begins with the crying sounds of despondent keyboards instantly setting a scene of sorrow and woe for the album's opening track "Sometimes." After a brief moment of silence, we hear not much more than electronically enhanced percussive sounds, perhaps suggesting a jagged heartbeat as Shirley Manson begins to sing the following:
"sometimes i'd rather take a beating
sometimes i'd rather take a punch
i learn more when I am bleeding
you knock me down and i get up
sometimes i need to forgive you
sometimes i want to destroy
sometimes i know it was not your fault
but i blame you anyway"
What struck me most about this opening to the album is the fact that every Garbage album to date has begun with a veritable pile driver of a song. Regarding "Sometimes," you wait for the full attack of the music to arrive, yet for the entirety of the song's near three minutes, that very attack never arrives, making the song work not so much as a prelude but as a fully pregnant pause. All tension and no release.
With the next tracks, the booming "Empty" and the approaching seven minute stunner "Blackout," the full Garbage attack arrives but they only add to the inner tension and turbulence of "Sometimes." Again offering no sense of release, the former addresses the constant battle against one's ever present inner demons unfortunately to no avail and the latter confronts the reality of one (or all of us) growing increasingly numb by bottling emotions to uphold false public personas instead of revealing the greater and uglier truths about ourselves.
"Strange Little Birds" then continues with essentially a suite of slower paced songs that are more cinematic and dramatically enveloping in tone rather explosive. "If I Lost You," featuring strong multi-tracked vocal harmonies by Manson, deals with emotional dependence and paralysis where the self explanatory "Night Drive Loneliness" extols the beauty found in self-imposed solitude where the only emotional support is found through sad songs.
Dark romance unfolds in the stirring "Even Though Our Love Is Doomed," where Manson, possibly echoing the star crossed youths of "#1 Crush" now deep into middle age yet still together, addresses the evolving nature of love as we age, questioning its validity and virility. "Can you love me for what I've become," she asks. "Love me for what I said I would not become." While she contemplates ending the romance primarily out of the fear that they will become "dead to life...dulled to extinction...lost in dreams" and "sleepwalking," the answers always return to the core of the mater:
"you're the only thing worth fighting for
you're the only thing worth dying for"
During the album's final third, "Strange Little Birds" begins to build significantly upwards in volume and a power that becomes nearly orgasmic. The pulsing buzzsaw that is the erotically aching "Magnetized," echoes 10cc's "I'm Not In Love" while displaying the internal dangers when crossing emotional red lights for forbidden fruit. With the pounding "We Never Tell" and the roaring, slashing, six minute scorcher "So We Can Stay Alive" (which sounds like a live in concert, pre-encore closing number if I've ever heard one), the band raises their collective fists as they howl into the abyss of mortality, ensuring that this foursome will no go into that sweet goodnight quietly.
The penultimate "Teaching Little Fingers To Play" brings the album to its uneasy resolution. Echoing both earlier Garbage tracks "Fix Me Now" and "When I Grow Up," the song traces hard truths about growing up, growing older and therefore, choosing to accept or reject life's changes.
"nothing ever stays the same
youth and beauty don't remain
the wise they say 'adapt or die'
if you don't grow, you'll calcify
but you're too scared to try
i'm all grown up
no one around to fix me now
i'm doing it my own way
i'm changing things up
like i'm teaching little fingers to play"
"Amends" marks the album's brooding finale as it confronts the difficult nature of forgiveness, whether towards one who has wronged you or even to oneself. For six minutes, Garbage delivers their third dark epic within the full album, as Butch Vig's drums grow more emphatic, both Steve Marker and Duke Erickson's guitars wind and claw their respective ways around each other as Shirley Manson intones the words "I don't know you" over and over into the sonic storm and beyond.
To my great surprise, Garbage's "Strange Little Birds" is decidedly and defiantly not an album that reaches out and grabs you. It insinuates itself into you, kind of like a sonic and thematic twin to The Flaming Lips' "The Terror" (released April 1, 2013). The process of the "Strange Little Birds" experience is one that may take several listens as this is quite a different kind of album from the band as the emphasis is not necessarily upon the layers upon layers of sound, the aggressive beats, the sexual dominance and dance floor sweat.
With this album, the layers upon layers of sound remain but are presented in a much more cinematic style, as if Garbage had released their own film score to an imaginary motion picture. In fact, as I listened to the album my first few spins, I often found myself reminding myself that I was not actually listening to Trent Reznor, as "Strange Little Birds" happens to carry a sonic palate and presentation not terribly far removed from what we could hear upon either a Nine Inch Nails album or Reznor film score with his collaborator Atticus Ross.
Yes, nuance plays a considerably larger role within the music throughout the album with the prevalence to keyboards and synthesizers providing the musical bedrock rather than the guitars and tape loops. Several songs even contain a more stripped down approach, especially with Vig's drums, thus giving the music some breathing space.
But unlike a Nine Inch Nails album, which can often feel to be savagely interior, Garbage remains populist and therefore, communal. For as grim as "Strange Little Birds" often is, Garbage remain gracious, sympathetic hosts to all of us who love them because it has always felt that they love all of us in return and openly so. We are all changing and aging together and this tempestuous song cycle showcases the band taking us all by the hand as we walk into our collective futures together, for it is happening to every single one of us.
When you decide to take the plunge into the world of Garbage's "Strange Little Birds," you will not only receive an artistic work that remains as forward thinking and a relevant as every other album within the band's discography. You may find yourself startled by the moody, challenging complexity that firmly demonstrates that the story of Garbage is far from completed.
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