Artists Condensed: Garbage (part one)

By msarko on 12/1/09 6:37pm
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Garbage is a band that really captures the sound of the 90's, especially the second half the decade. This is a bit of a double-edged compliment, though. The problem with being "the sound" of something is that the material is fundamentally dated. Garbage was a perfect synthesis of grunge, alternative rock, pop and many stripes of electronic music, which taken as a whole is basically 1997 in song. It's only recently that I've been able to pick up the better part of the band's output and approach it without an initial backlash. Like psychedelia in the late 60's and cheesy synthesizers in the mid 80's, the touch of a DJ over energetic rock is so 90's it's almost painful, but nobody did it better than Shirley Manson and the three sound engineers/musicians who gave her the spotlight.

In late 1995 and early 1996, it was impossible to turn on MTV for any significant period of time and not see the video for "Stupid Girl". It was grainy and a little scary, as much for its entirely new sound as for Shirley Manson's unsettling take on screen presence. "Stupid Girl" is, all told, the finest track on the band's eponymous debut and it's also the best example of the sound they would end up refining on later albums. What's so interesting about Garbage is that, at their best, their songs are surprisingly conventional, almost timeless. The hard, punky songs on the album are good but not all that enduring and it's actually kind of adorable to listen to the then-clever and now-campy tricks on "Supervixen".

Garbage had a "both sides of the pond" approach to promotion, so there are a ridiculous number of singles variations in their catalog, especially in their early days. This means that there were a lot of B-sides and oddities that slipped through the cracks, some that probably should have made it onto an album, such as the ever-so-gothy "#1 Crush".

Version 2.0, despite its dialup-ready title, is Garbage at their best. The album is a nice balance of video-friendly tracks like the excellent "I Think I'm Paranoid" and more divergent material we'll be looking at later this week. If there was any band in the late 90's aware of just where they stood in the pop landscape, Garbage was it. They were famous chart-toppers, but they also had a degree of underground cred thanks to a devotion to electronic sounds.

I'm reserving most of what made the band's third album, Beautiful Garbage, interesting for the second installment of this feature, though it is important to note where the album fits in history. Beautiful Garbage hit the shelves in Autumn 2001, which means those of us listening in the States were just a few short weeks away from having no palate for cheeky, socially progressive pop. Beautiful Garbage was an album for the go-go era that preceded it, which is likely why it performed better in Australia and the UK than it did Stateside. A shame, considering that it's exactly what a third album ought to be in terms of stylistic evolution.

Between Shirley Manson's solo career and a general change in tone, Garbage didn't do much between 2001 and 2005. After a stutter or two they managed to record Bleed Like Me, an album that practically screams "Let's get this over with". Aside from the title track, the album sounds exactly like what it is: Garbage not wanting to be Garbage anymore. Most of the tracks are a generic approximation of what the band did back in the mid 90's and they assumed a political edge that frankly just didn't fit. Garbage cut their promotional tour short and went on hiatus. Since then the individual members have batted around the idea of recording again, but nothing has materialized.

 

For their time, Garbage did some really impressive work. Taken out of their time, not so much. I'll be back later this week to look at some of the band's experiments and B-sides.

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