New album from Garbage rocks, rolls
By Julie Sager (Retriever Weekly Editorial Staff)
Without a doubt, Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson is my favorite of what I like to call the ‘inadvertent feminists’– people whose work makes them a poster child for equality and empowerment without them necessarily having meant to become such a thing. The fierce, redheaded Scot has, over several albums, escaped the notion that being a girl in a boys’ band is synonymous with being cute, weak, and innocent, and on Garbage’s new album, Bleed Like Me, continues to take the pop-alternative world by storm with that unmistakable blend of sexuality, power, and dance-worthy melodies.
The only real hint that Garbage has become, well, incredibly famous over the last few years comes on the album’s first track, “Bad Boyfriend,” and only because it features the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl on drums; their sound has evolved and matured but not changed dramatically from the early, but still distinctive sound of the Pink album. Showing their virtuosity as well as their creativity, the album covers a wide variety of territory: “Right Between the Eyes” is a glorious, fist-pumping track, while songs like “Happy Home” experience life in a slower and more melancholy fashion, showing Garbage as a band who is unafraid to be sexy, powerful, mature, fragile, and vulnerable all at the same time. The title track of Bleed Like Me is particularly interesting; as a mid-tempo, acoustic-based exploration, it combines a storytelling style of songwriting with a soaring, repetitive chorus, rather what I imagine a combination of Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” and the musical Rent’s “Will I?” would turn out to be.
My favorite track on the album is, surprisingly enough, the single “Why Do You Love Me.” A great shout-along chorus in precisely the right range for singing loudly in one’s car in traffic, it truly illustrates the band’s complexities, addressing not just relationship issues, but portrayals of femininity in general culture: “I’m no Barbie doll, I’m not your baby girl/So I’ve done ugly things and I have made mistakes/And I am not as pretty as those girls in magazines/I am rotten to the core if they’re to be believed.” Each time I listen to the song, I come up with a new interpretation of what the song is about and why the narrator would ask that crucial title question.
Other stand-out tracks include the honest-but-not-too-political “Sex Is Not The Enemy,” the memorable chorus of “Boys Wanna Fight,” and the dance-inducing “Metal Heart,” but really, the whole album is a treat from beginning to end. Garbage has turned out to be a band that ages very well; though this is their fourth album, and their sound has noticeably matured and grown with them, they still bear a striking resemblance to what they sounded like when they began. Rather than escaping their past or trying a new sound on every album, the band has gotten lucky—they found something that works and have grown with it along the way.
Manson’s unabashed commitment to being exactly who she wants to be is rare in pop music, where images of femininity come and go at the whims of record executives. Whether she means to or not, she and Garbage have become frontrunners for empowerment, showing women and girls the world over that you can participate in a male-dominated world such as music without having to sacrifice your individual identity.
Julie Sager is the Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Retriever Weekly, and really just thinks any band with redheads in it is just great. She can be reached at julie@trw.umbc.edu.
Copyright: The Retriever Weekly