For better or worse, Garbage never became as big as Smashing Pumpkins. A decade removed from the goth tropes they adored, both bands scored a chart crossover at the same time. “1979” and “Stupid Girl” formed part of the scrim of 1996: beatwise, shrewd about electronic manipulations, lavishing hooks upon chewy hooks, and posting lyrics as vivid as graffiti. In 1998, as the Pumpkins’ mass popularity plateaued, Garbage released Version 2.0, the Parallel Lines of the Y2K era, on which singer Shirley Manson and her male colleagues lustily pillaged genre after genre until their reconfigurations of saint, sinner, whore, and angel tropes gleamed anew. The Pumpkins may have collected the multi-platinum certs, but Version 2.0 made Adore, Billy Corgan & co.’s committed take on what we then called “electronica,” sound wan.
With both acts playing to their respective cults these days, it’s worth pondering what a Garbage fan looks like in 2025—a ’90s nostalgist? Herein lies the curse of being a second-tier act. An experiment begun as a diversion for Nirvana/Pumpkins producer Butch Vig and mates Duke Erickson and Steve Marker took off when their studio expertise meshed with Manson’s talent for pastiche. During that pre-internet false dawn when the CD boom rekindled curiosity about bygone sounds, Garbage—energized by a well-chosen record collection—epitomized a savvy, smart present that few confused with the future. They had a sell-by date.
Nevertheless, they’ve kept on keeping on, still capable of impeccable assemblages of fuzz and melody, and their disgust at the rise of authoritarianism distinguishes them from their contemporaries. A series of incisive and gently brutal tracks on 2021’s No Gods No Masters demonstrated that Garbage still had it. Slip “Godhead” and “The Creeps” on a playlist next to evergreens like “Supervixen” and “I Think I’m Paranoid” and no one will blink. By contrast, new album Let All That We Imagine Be the Light is as tentative as mid-period albums Bleed Like Me and Not Your Kind of People. Manson still sounds uncannily fierce and in command; the songs are rudderless, neither here nor there. A fabulous conceit in search of referents, “There’s No Future in Optimism” sums up the problem. Those guitars-as-keyboards and vice versa still boast a processed vigor, but after sketching an apocalyptic party-like-it’s-1999 scenario in the first verse, Manson has nothing else to say except to repeat “future love love future” as a hook.
The least a listener can expect from Let All That We Imagine Be the Light is a sharp mix. Vig, Marker, and Erickson, old pros, listen to modern music and get the levels right; no overcompression or thinness here. On the thunking “R U Happy Now ” the question of whether, say, Deep Sea Diver are on Manson’s best-of-2025 playlist isn’t irrelevant. She’s not afraid to call out shit. “Make no mistake, friend, they hate your women/They love your children and they love their guns” is right on: Garbage understand that they have to spell out the obvious in perilous times. But other tracks are suggestions, or function as overtures for absent symphonies. The album’s middle section (“Radical” and “Love to Give”) has identical minor-key progressions and first-draft lyrics.
That said, at least a third of the album summons the churn of yore, with callbacks to former triumphs that don’t play like rewrites. “The Day That I Met God” pushes Manson into a plaintiveness that recalls Version 2.0’s “You Look So Fine.” “Chinese Fire Hose” has the insouciance of “Empty” with Manson archly belting, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a fucking minute,” over slap bass—the kind of musical vulgarity the quartet has earned, three decades into a career. And the twangy riff on “Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty” is the foundation for one of those sparkling kiss-offs that’s Garbage’s specialty.
Of course, lower expectations help second-tier bands like Garbage. Their career arc since 2001’s Beautiful Garbage suggests that wobbly songwriting is as much a tic as their masterful studio expertise. The cult still thrives, and we’ll happily settle for Let All We Imagine Be the Light—until the next album.
