I don't know how long it's been since you've listened to Garbage's best and biggest albums, but there's a good chance that 1995's self-titled debut and 1998's Version 2.0 are more brutal than you remember. The former is all sneering, lapsed-Catholic angst (on "Vow", a scorned Shirley Manson compares herself to "Jesus Christ coming back from the dead" and utters the words like they're curdling in her mouth) and dark sensuality ("This is what he pays me for," she breathes on the early single "Queer", "I'll show you how it's done"). Version 2.0 focused even more on internal demons: There's the forlorn "Medication", the asphyxial trip-hop of "Hammering in My Head", and the feel-good anxiety disorder anthem of the 90s, "I Think I'm Paranoid". Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, and Butch Vig supplied the sort of relentlessly keyed-up, cranked-to-11 racket you get with a band full of producers, matching Manson's macabre with a persistent sense of unease. "When I grow up, I'll be stable," went the optimistic refrain of one of their bigger radio hits, but those familiar with the deep cuts knew that was wishful thinking.
Garbage reigned in the late-period glory days of alternative-rock radio, probably because their sound was a hectic amalgamation of almost everything that mingled on the format's airwaves: electronica, punk, industrial rock, grunge, and the occasional trip-hop. But given the recent decline of the alt-rock format, the radio station on which you first heard Garbage's big hits probably changed formats years ago. So when Garbage entered the studio to record Not Your Kind of People, their first release in seven years, they faced a conundrum that many other artists who found success in the alt-rock-crazed 90s are dealing with, too: Do you update your approach to conform to a more contemporary sound? Or do you say fuck it and just party like it's 1998?
We got a hint of Garbage's answer earlier this year, when Manson called off plans for a solo album because her label wanted it to have a poppier, more radio-ready sound. ("Too noir," Geffen Records said of the demos. When she later scrapped the record, she issued a public statement: "We had the funeral…it made such a beautiful corpse that we had an open casket.") And, indeed, Not Your Kind of People is in some respects a return to form for Garbage. The material is tighter and more kinetic than their last two records, the relatively tepid Beautiful Garbage (2001) and Bleed Like Me (2005). There's the exhilarating opener "Automatic System Habit", which finds Manson spitting venom over a steely crunch of keyboards and percussion ("Not for you, not for me, not for your other lover/ I won't be your dirty little secret.") On the gentler side, there's the lush "Felt", which buries her vocals under an avalanche of arena-sized Siamese Dream guitars. It's a soothing moment on the otherwise pummeling record but, characteristically, Manson can't help but sound a little sinister as she sings, "They're only feelings, baby."
Growing up hasn't made Garbage any more stable. Their music is still focused primarily on pain and darkness, so much so that it occasionally feels rote, as on the melodramatic, predictable "I Hate Love". Then there's the unfortunate finale "Beloved Freak", a brooding ballad that ends with Manson reprising "This Little Light of Mine". It's a moment that aims for catharsis but veers into the maudlin. Though not without highlights, Not Your Kind of People contains nothing as memorable as their big hits, and it's heavier on the filler than their earlier albums.
The great irony of alternative rock was how relative that term is; as Thomas Frank once asked in the title of an essay about the whole phenomenon, "Alternative to What?" In the mid-to-late 90s, Garbage didn't feel so much in opposition to the times as they did a frenzied synthesis of everything that was happening in rock at the moment. That'd be a harder task to accomplish now, in more sonically diffuse times, but now-ness is no longer Garbage's aim. "It's not our job to reinvent the wheel," Manson said in a recent interview, reflecting on the new album. "That's the playground of the young." So Not Your Kind of People is a statement from a band that's stuck, combatively, to its guns. The times have changed but Garbage haven't, and now, for better and for worse, they've at last become alternative to everything.
