Review: Garbage Returns With ‘Strange Little Birds’

 Review: Garbage Returns With ‘Strange Little Birds’
By Jon Caramanica - June, 8, 2016
Online on New York Times

  Garbage

“Strange Little Birds”

(Stunvolume)

What is the point of aging if you never grow up? Two decades ago, Garbage released its first album full of jagged, mottled, searing pop-rock, a refreshing post-grunge wake-up. For a while, it continued apace with its tense approach but faded over time, as anger inevitably does.

After a hiatus, Garbage is back to releasing albums semi-regularly — the new “Strange Little Birds” is the band’s second album since 2012 — and admirably, it has stuck by its vision. The production has the old, familiar roar, full of Duke Erikson and Steve Marker’s streaking guitars, Butch Vig’s trash-can drums and background thunderstorm rustles. And then there’s Shirley Manson, swaggering and staggering as usual, singing songs full of anxiety about whether she’s enough, like the morbid “If I Lost You,” where she exhales deeply, “You tell me I’ve got nothing to worry about/they’ve got nothing on me.”

  Ms. Manson has long been a sweet-voiced miserablist, and mostly remains so here, like on “Magnetized,” where she sings, “You bring your light, I’ll bring the pain/You bring your joy, I’ll bring my shame” (perhaps a nod to “Wicked Games” by the Weeknd, an artist who delivers modern-day tender macabre).

But even though structurally “Strange Little Birds” evokes the band’s early work, it’s clear there’s mellowness afoot. Ms. Manson now lives California. “I spent 40 years of my life in a high-stress state,” she recently told Entertainment Weekly. “That vanished once I came to L.A.” And so what was once a slash-and-burn approach has become more pragmatic, whether it’s the search for fulfillment on “Empty,” or how Ms. Manson confronts reality on “If I Lost You,” on which she seems to admonish herself for her own deep-seated doubt: “Not every man is made the same/so unevolved to think that way.” But so evolved to sing about it.