Garbage

The primary focus for them was celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Garbage, the iconic album that remains home to half a dozen staples of both pop and alternative radio to this day. In conjunction with its deluxe reissue, Garbage also ventured out on a relatively brief tour in which they drew exclusively from the source material.

“We had to learn all the songs again, as well as all the B-sides,” explains Butch Vig, the band’s drummer. “We wanted to make it really special, as we were only going to do 30 shows all up. It was important to us that these felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience for our fans, and I think those that came to see the show will testify to that. It felt like the right thing to do, and I think we all got a lot out of it. The truth is we’re really lucky to still be here after all this time.”

Simultaneously, Garbage – Vig, vocalist Shirley Manson and guitarists Duke Erikson and Steve Marker – were working towards the completion of their sixth studio album, Strange Little Birds. Vig recalls the recording process fondly, as he feels the band members now have a much clearer idea of both how to make music and what it is they want to get out of it.

“The writing sessions are pretty casual,” he says. “We crack open a bottle of wine, Shirley sits down on the couch with a microphone and then Steve, Duke and myself wander around to different instruments – guitar, bass, keyboards, drums – and see if anything we strike up hits our fancy. We’ll work for a couple of weeks, take a couple of weeks off, go back and forth like that. We did this for about a year after we stopped touring [2012 album] Not Your Kind Of People, and soon enough we had about 20 songs.

“Garbage being Garbage, we recorded a lot of different things. When it came to mixing the album, though, we stripped everything back. I think that’s what you hear on this record – by drawing everything back in, the songs are able to get right up in your face.”

Eschewing the traditional origin story of being friends in high school or replying to a ‘musicians wanted’ ad, Garbage began in the early ’90s as a studio project for some like-minded music industry types who were disenfranchised with what surrounded them. Vig, in particular, is perhaps the most famous member of the group – away from his drumming duties, he is a record producer of some note, having worked on albums by the likes of Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters and AFI. Interestingly, however, he is not the sole credited producer on any Garbage record – these, as the liner notes will testify, are produced by Garbage as an entity.

“A producer is someone with an opinion,” explains Vig. “All four of us are very opinionated. We butt heads every day in the studio. We’re lucky that we share a sensibility that has allowed us to work through differences. At the end of the day, I think we get to a point where all four of us have a clear idea of what we need to do. It’s not always easy, but we try. It’s always going to end up sounding like Garbage all the same, even if we tried to make it different. That comes back to our sensibilities – the way that we play, the music we like, how we think things should sound. I think that’s one of our strengths, and the reason we’re still here after 20-something years. We’ve been together long enough to know when to let things go and not take them personally.”

Vig speaks both fondly and often about “the Garbage sound”, which is an interesting topic of discussion when one looks at the songs that have come to shape the band’s career, from straight-up sugar-rush pop (‘Cherry Lips’, ‘Special’) to big guitar rockers (‘Why Do You Love Me’, ‘I Think I’m Paranoid’) all the way through to lush, quiet moments of intimacy (‘Queer’, ‘Milk’). The so-called ‘Garbage sound’ exists, paradoxically, because there is no ‘Garbage sound’ – it is a conscientious effort on behalf of Vig and co. to constantly reinvent, adapt and evolve themselves.

“On our first album, we blended a lot of different styles,” he says. “We had pop beats, electronica, techno, punk rock fuzz guitar, big melodies and harmonies. At the time, it really caught people off guard. We’re lucky to have a singer like Shirley – she has such a strong persona, so it was easy for us to write songs as different as ‘Vow’, ‘Queer’ and ‘Stupid Girl’. We’ve carried that with us. Every record we’ve done shows that every song has its own unique stamp. Shirley is what holds it together – she can keep the focus and glue it all together.”