Garbage
Source :
www.filter-mag.com
The band battled illness, surgery, creative disagreements, major life changes and—depending who you ask—either a break-up or a much-needed sabbatical. But nothing good comes easy… and Bleed Like Me is simply smashing. From the lusty, masochistic skronk of album opener “Bad Boyfriend” to the industrial-strength protest-pop of “Metal Heart” to the hauntingly transgressive title track, it’s everything that you’d expect from one of the past decade’s most acclaimed and innovative bands: Sexy, sonically ambitious, loud, emotionally fraught and catchy as can be.
“To me, personally, the very fact that it got finished is a miracle ,” says singer Shirley Manson. But then, so is the very fact that Garbage has been at it for ten years. When Manson first hooked up with Butch Vig, Steve Marker and Duke Erikson, the band was pegged as “three producers and a girl.” Vig and Erikson had been, respectively, the drummer and the frontman for Midwestern guitar-pop favorites Spooner, as well as mid-‘80s college radio successes Fire Town. Vig’s old college buddy Marker engineered Spooner’s very first recordings on a four-track in his basement; the two men went on to found Smart Studios, producing and engineering such seminal post-hardcore bands as Killdozer and Die Kreuzen. Then Vig manned the console for such landmark records as the Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish and of course, Nirvana’s Nevermind, as well as discs by Sonic Youth, L7, House of Pain and Freedy Johnston.
Garbage was meant to be a lark, a way for three old friends to take advantage of success and have fun on the other side of the control room. But someone had to sing. “It was just going to be a blip in our personal history,” says Manson, who began her career playing keyboards in the Scottish combo Goodbye Mr. MacKenzie, then fronted her own band Angelfish.
Three records later—1995’s Garbage, 1998’s Version 2.0 and 2001’s Beautiful Garbage— Garbage has seen their albums top the charts around the world, had countless hit singles (“Queer,” “Happy When It Rains,” “Stupid Girl,” “Special,” “Cherry Lips”), graced every year-end best-of you can name, earned several Grammy nominations (including Best New Artist in 1997 and Album of the Year for Version 2.0 in 2001) and cut a James Bond movie theme (“The World Is Not Enough”). They’ve also played close to 1000 shows, from dives to sheds to giant festivals, as well as tours with Smashing Pumpkins, Alanis Morrisette, U2 and No Doubt.
Manson, Vig, Erikson and Marker are true musical soulmates, equally in love with experiments and bubblegum, with noise and beauty, always welding bright sounds, big hooks and bigger melodies to Manson’s goth-glam sensibility and innate Scottish pessimism. They were, in fact, a family— and in a family, there’s always gonna be some conflict and dysfunction.
“It got pretty dark there, that’s for sure,” says Erikson, ever the voice of reason. “All four of us might have been willing to just let it go.” It wasn’t so much the drama as “no one was agreeing on the direction of the music,” he continues. “At different times, different band members would come up with stuff, but the other three wouldn’t be on board. When you lose that common bond of the music, you’ve got nothing.”
Good thing this story has a happy ending. “What we realized, after we did take five months off to sort of reassess,” says Marker, “was, we’ve been through all this other bullshit...”
“And we still want to do it,” finishes Manson. “All the bands that came out back when we did are gone, but we’re still standing, wanting to make records, regardless of success or expectations or other outside forces. That’s a really empowering feeling, and I think it helped us make the record that we wanted in the end.”
All of Bleed Like Me sounds great. Buzzsaw guitars give “Why Do You Love Me” an overtone that’s sinister as much as pleading, with a melody that Vig describes as Spectoresque. “Sped-up girl group,” Erikson agrees. The funky, destined-to-be-a-dancefloor-classic “Boys Wanna Fight” takes a sassy, indirect jab at world affairs, while the cutting, sing-song “Sex Is Not the Enemy” takes a direct one at so-called moral leaders. The slow-building sparks of “Happy Home” and the ballad “It’s All Over But the Crying” are all the more gorgeously vulnerable amidst the anger and distortion of the other songs.
And just as that moment prompted Vig to reflect on where he’s been and what he’s done as a producer, Bleed Like Me has him marvelling at Garbage. “We have accomplished a lot more as a band than I ever thought we would,” he says.
“To even get to make a fourth record is incredibly lucky,” Manson echoes. "We have this incredibly long history. I think we’re amazed by that, and proud of it.”
“It really is hard to stay together as a group, it'd be so easy to just pursue our own individual desires," she continues. "But I still believe in the notion of a band-- that people can come together and find a way to work on something together. I’m still in love with the romance of rock’n’roll.”
