Don't surprised if, mere moments into Garbage's new album Not Your Kind Of People (out May 15 via their new self-owned label, STUNVOLUME), you forget that it's been seven years since their last studio effort, 2005's Bleed Like Me. Don't be surprised if it's also your favorite thing they've ever done. Leaner, meaner, noisier and better than anything the band (a crack team of producers with Shirley Manson at the saucy center) has recorded since their self-titled debut, Not Your Kind Of People both re-ignites and re-enforces their trademark sound: crunchy electronics, brutal post-glam electric guitars, and, of course, Manson's soulful miserable-ism.
Free Download: "Automatic Systematic Habit" by Garbage
Per usual, each track is filled to the brim and beyond with effortless production flourishes. Note the retro '70s prog-rock synthesizers of "Automatic Systematic Habit", the looped pianos of "Big Bright World" and industrial glitchcore breakdown halfway through "Control". First single "Blood For Poppies" surrounds a sleek and spacious keyboard bridge with a muddy post-grunge guitar riff and coarse hip-hop beats, while its UK counterpart "Battle In Me" borrows the start-stop dynamics of '95's "Supervixen", dropping it into a swirling stew of sputtering rhythms and punch-in-the-face guitars. The album hardly takes a moment to breathe, even on its pyschedelic, sensual title track—"We are not your kind of people," Shirley coos, her voice perfectly coated in John Lennon's Leslie cabinet speaker effect, "You seem kind of phony, everything's a lie."
Manson may still be riding high on that deep depression ("Your words are pretty, but I already know who you are," she forewarns on the sweeping, tellingly titled "I Hate Love"), but her bandmates sound positively thrilled to be making noise together again. You can hear the enthusiasm in every distorted drum loop, each choppy guitar lick (there's plenty of both in the relentlessly high-energy "Man On A Wire"). Freed from the '90s MTV model they once exemplified, Garbage tear through the material without fuss, without shallow pandering or easy hooks. The album never waits for us to catch up, charging full speed ahead towards rapturous closer "Beloved Freak", a majestic ode to the outsiders (note the curious "This Little Light Of Mine" interpolation) that sighs and breathes over treated pianos and airy guitars.
Despite its characteristically dense production, this Garbage record never feels weighted down by its sounds—there's an immediacy to these songs that rips through the sonic coating, rather than the other way around. Going indie certainly suits them—Not Your Kind Of People is not your kind of major label release; it stomps, kicks, roars, fucks and kisses you in all the right places and doesn't wait for you to like it. That that, y'know... you won't.
SumOlogy: The best Garbage album since their 1995 debut. The guitars are meaner, the beats go harder—and, well, Shirley Manson is still Shirley Manson. Who could ask for anything more?
Grade: A
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Follow Brett Warner on Twitter: @Erasurehead
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