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Garbage in, garbage out by Joshua
Maloni
You could say the past three-and-a-half years have been nothing but garbage for Butch Vig, Steve Marker, Duke Erikson and Shirley Manson. The foursome’s third album, “Beautifulgarbage,” was released on the heels of September 11 and did not sell, nor did the band feel up to promoting it; Manson, the foursome’s frontwoman, was told she had a growth on her vocal chords, which could lead to voice-jeopardizing surgery; Vig had two medical missteps and quit the band for four months. But last year, on the heels of the group’s 10-year anniversary, the band fell into a bit of luck, as it were. Manson got a second opinion, which led to a quick-and-easy, throat-sparing operation; Vig recovered and came back to the band with a fresh outlook; and the group’s recently released single, “Why Do You Love Me?” is a hit, encouraging the quartet that album four, April 12’s “Bleed Like Me,” will be well-received. With health problems resolved, burned-out emotions healed and a spanking new album chock full of modern rock goodness, the foursome is once again focused on nothing but Garbage. “We’re in pretty good shape right now,” Vig said during a recent phone interview. “Getting the record done has sort of taken a monkey off our backs. This black cloud was hanging over the band and it was an amazing success that we even got the record done.” “It’s a very primal-sounding rock record, and it’s very desperate and phonetic-sounding record in (parts) … and that’s the kind of record that we wanted make,” Vig said of the finished product, a stripped-down – for the industrial/techno rock savvy band, anyway – collection of 10 hard-hitting songs. But, while the end was better than the beginning, getting there didn’t come easy. “For some reason, in 2003, we just spiraled down into a black hole, and we were arguing about everything,” Vig explained. “Shirley was having writer’s block and I was not inspired about how the record was sounding. We just fought over everything and were so miserable. I just walked in one day, in October, and said ‘(expletive) it, I can’t take this anymore – I’m out of here.’ “I thought the band was over. And after being able to go home and clear my head – I went to Los Angeles for three months and didn’t do anything; it was the first sort of long break I’d had in I can’t tell you how many years – I was able to sort of examine … and look myself in the mirror and ask myself how important Garbage was to me, and if we were going to try and resurrect it, what we needed to do.” The band moved from its Smart Studio headquarters in Vig’s native Madison, Wisc., to Los Angeles. The new digs pushed the band beyond its comfort zone and helped the group focus on fixing that which had fragmented it. “It forced us into a new environment,” Vig said. “We tried collaborating with John King from the Dust Brothers. It was with mixed results – we only ended up with one song on the record, “Bad Boyfriend.” It was good working with someone else. He made us, as a band, sit down and talk about the band and not about our personal problems. “It kind of made us a little defensive, because we’ve always done it ourselves. To have someone else in the room made us tougher; it made us united as a band front.” While the group and King only created one song, it is perhaps the album’s strongest cut. Paired with the Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl – who Vig produced when he was drumming for Nirvana – the adrenaline-rushing “Bad Boyfriend” sets the tone for “Bleed Like Me.” “They upped the bar, they upped the ante with that song,” Vig said. “I think that song made us want to up the ante in everything.” Feeling good, the band returned to Wisconsin and quickly pounded out the rest of the album. It features Manson’s socially biting lyrics; it jabs at politicians, the war and society as a whole. Moreover, her bandmates are lively as ever backing her with rock rivets. “It sounds great in rehearsal – it’s a gas to play,” Vig said. “Why Do You Love Me” is a super-charged, emotionally wrought song in which Manson says “I’m no Barbie doll/I’m not your baby girl.” “Bleed Like Me” is ballad-esque, for Garbage, and surprisingly poignant, as Manson describes people like Avalanche (Sullen and too thin/She starves herself to get rid of sin … And she says:/Hey baby can you bleed like me?). “ I love the way this album sounds,” Vig said. “It’s not perfectly mixed … It’s messier, and there’s kind of a smoky, darkness to it. It has a very cohesive feel. To me, it sounds very much like Garbage.” “Bleed Like Me” comes out on April 12. Garbage plays at the Kool Haus in Toronto on April 25. These Songs Are Garbage The Band’s Hit
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