Garbage - classic or dud

Total classic for the first two albums and pretty much all of the pre-2001 B-sides. Last album a tad patchy, and made worse by the fact that the wrong songs were made singles. But "Can't Cry These Tears" is pure genius.

Ah...no. ;-)

Chaki, what wouldn't you hit?

Or do you chill out, down a pint and have a fucking good laugh as you try hard to imitate Bradley while dancing to 'Reach' by S Club 7?

I'm just curious, because you seem to hate virtually any and every vaguely mainstream band I've ever mentioned. Garbage are fab and if you can't shake your butt to 'Paranoid' then you must be dead.

I don't 'chill out' or drink pints either.

I am 'dead' to most. so what? they are dead to me as well.

got it!

you did say c or d. I'm saying d.

'Cherry Lips' would be okay except its a total rip off of Nikka Costa's 'Everybody Got Their Something', unless its the other way round (prefer Nikka tho)

What I think is interesting about Garbage is that they fetishised the digital at a point when the obvious influence - namely, hip hop - was actually still in a fairly naturalist mode, so that they were forced to instead tie their mast to "electronica" (of course they might have decided to do this anyway to suit their audience). "Electronica" has receded in terms of influence on pop-rock (replaced by an electronically reinvigorated hip hop), and now what seemed like really obvious musical choices for Garbage to make at the time appear quite curious. The songs on their second album are quite light on groove in the conventional, hip-hop sense; they're much monolithic, in that they're so cluttered that the treble and the bass are essentially fused together. The closest modern reference I can think of is Max Martin; the obvious other one is Phil Spector. It means though that they sound much more unambiguously pop now than they did then... at least to these ears. It's a pretty "white" sound obviously, which is where I think they stand out quite clearly as predecessors to the more electronic end of nu-metal.

I don't have the recent album as both the singles annoyed me, the bridge of "Cherry Lips" excepted.

CD80 Garbage "portable" go!

Vow
Only Happy When It Rains
Supervixen
Queer
Stupid Girl
Milk
#1 Crush
Push It
Temptation Waits
I Think I'm Paranoid
Special
When I Grow Up
The Trick Is to Keep Breathing
You Look So Fine
Thirteen
The World Is Not Enough
Androgyny
Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)
Breaking Up the Girl
Parade

(chronological according to first release - single or album - and missing "Shut Your Mouth", replaced by key album tracks. 80:20)

over-produced angst rock with average vox, no sex appeal, and darkish-i-mean-it-man lyrics.
and the men in the group were just 40ish frat rockers

Garbage Vol. 2 sounded great at the time and in a funny way even better now as the sort of lost ancestor for Linkin Park-style digi-rock - only not much of the current digi-rock is as burnished and kaleidoscopic as tracks like "Temptation Waits", "Push It" and Hammer In My Head".

OTM!

did the new one tank that badly?

w. garbage, i dunno why they bothered playing live and stuff. they were really a prefab sprout type studio band?

Hits package out Tuesday

Fuck the remixes, where's the b-sides?

Tim Finney unsurprisingly OTM about Version 2.0 odd charm (can a record be an anachronicism yet ahead of its time?).

Their singles hold up fairly well. In a fit of euphoria I once called the above album the Parallel Lines of the nineties.

i think they have about two pretty key singles: 'vow' and 'i think i'm paranoid'

i think i've still got that debut s/t record sitting around somewhere.

They're also your one-stop shop for alt-rock videography cliches, if you're into that kind of thing. Dirty, chemically damaged film... illegible writing scrawled everywhere... flares between over- and under-exposed shots...awkward stop-and-start speed changes... watching "Stupid Girl" just brings back hours and hours of MTV

One of the basic hd TV channels in my area is a Latin music channel. I was channel surfing the other day and and happened upon a video by a singer/group that I missed the name of which was practically a cover of the "Stupid Girl" video (similar visual effects & sets, even the singer looked like a latina Shirley Manson).

Alternacandy is the best!

i'd forgotten how exciting 'vow' was, having just heard it for the first time in probably ten years

Tubular bells + kettle drums in middle section of Cherry Lips = classic

I still really like 2.0

"I Think I'm Paranoid" was integral to my improvement as a Rock Band player last year.

Never thought I'd see Shirley T-1000 it up as urinal and then stab a guy at the time. Shows what I knew.

I heard "Why Do You Love Me?" for the first time in years on the muzak where I had lunch yesterday. I'd forgotten how crummy it was. Sounds like an outtake form the first album. It seems like it should work--the band has a good pulse, Manson was a charismatic as ever--but it just doesn't gel. And that was their comeback single!

I remember, as a 16 year old, thinking that Garbage would take over the world; be the next Sonic Youth or Nirvana. Hah! I pretty much only like the intro riff fromt he first song ont he first album now, even if it does sound like the intro of Loveless.

new album out, yeah? halfway through it and it's more like "bleed like me" than the earlier albums, unfortunately.

I stuck Supervixen (aka Only Shallow II) on the other day!

― Just got offed, Friday, 1 August 2008 15:01 (4 years ago) Bookmark

lol thought i'd bone up on old mbv and this suddenly hit me. and it's pink

now listening to this instead obv

lol, so true.

This is better than anything on the new MBV record.

beyond love the first two albums, especially v2.0 which is so generous in its devotion to thinking of sounds you haven't heard.

also never get tired of the "supervixen" drop-out gimmick; i am easily amused (aroused?)

well since it's asked way upthread this is the thread with the back and forth between ned and tim about garbage TS: Curve's "Horror Head" vs. Garbage's entire discography

an ilx classic imo

you'll take Version 2.0 from my cold dead hands

anyone else heard the new one? the first track threw me off so much, i love it

like it sounds like it belongs on portishead's third

Yeah, I listened to it this morning. It's their strongest album in years. Some of the ballads are really great.

wow @ "magnetized." wow.

very positive 4 star review in the current mojo !

I'm listening to it now. Accidentally had it on shuffle and "Sometimes" going straight into "Magnetized" was incredible - disappointed it's not the actual running order. "Empty" is the only weak moment out of the first five songs so far!

i am so excited to really enjoy a garbage album in 2016 !!!!

Shirley's lyrics haven't got any better since the last album (which, no, stop saying things) but it really doesn't matter.

Opening of "Even If Our Love Is Doomed" reminds me of the melody of "Take Me Out". Like how part of "Night Drive Loneliness" seems to hark back to "You Look So Fine".

The enthusiasm in this thread is making me excited. Version 2.0 is like my original favourite album of all time but the last two were so not the direction they should have been following.

Empty seems like a very strange choice of single. It's one of the weakest songs on here.

Wish "We Never Tell" had had the megapop chorus it sounds like it should have had, and "So We Can Stay Alive" does but sounds like it shouldn't. Still like both of them! This is so much better than the last two records it's not even funny.

revisited most of the catalog over the past two days, and yeah, this is the best since version 2.0. gets better every time i listen to it

Nice to see this getting some pretty good reviews.

That feeling when your old favourite band releases their best album in 18 years!

I was really wanting to like this, but I didn't think too much until Magnetized. And thought the rest of the album was solidly great from there.

also not that impressed. 'Sometimes,' 'If I Lost You,' and 'We Never Tell' are great, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcfOmhGJ8G4

their best song/video combination in... idk how long. reminds me of "push it' in moood

I came around to tear your little world apart!

these guys have an amazing second act

been going through the whole discog and it's very striking how not your kind of people, strange little birds, "no horses," and no gods no masters are cumulatively way way way better than albums 3 and 4 (beautifulgarbage still kind of an underrated mess)

Listening to "Wolves" now, it occurred to me how Garbage still respect the vacillations in behavior we see in adolescents and respect how we can still have'em after 30.

also, i really really really wish i could buy the dress shirley manson wears in the "stupid girl" video. i bought a polka-dot dress this week just to appropriate her "i think i'm paranoid" look. as with madonna and janet jackson, when i first saw shirley manson i thought "wow i want to be her," and that's never really stopped

Wailing "Only Happy When It Rains" at karaoke was one of my finest moments in spring '23.

briefly meeting Shirley Manson a decade ago at a coffee shop was one of the better brushes w/fame i've had.

Androgyny really was an insane choice of lead single

Beautiful Garbage is almost my favourite of their LPs (over the debut) but I don't think it starts well, which was reaffirmed by a relisten only a few weeks ago. The Timo Maas remix of Breaking Up the Girl would be a welcome bonus on my copy.

Larry Mullins, subbing for an ill Butch Vig, kicked ass on "Cherry Lips" when they opened for U2 on the final leg of the Elevation tour in Miami.

I drank a pinot grigio next to Butch at Eataly in Vegas, but was too shy to say hello.

Androgyny really was an insane choice of lead single

Beautiful Garbage is almost my favourite of their LPs (over the debut) but I don't think it starts well, which was reaffirmed by a relisten only a few weeks ago. The Timo Maas remix of Breaking Up the Girl would be a welcome bonus on my copy.

― you can see me from westbury white horse

I quite like that song, but it was a insane choice indeed. Shut Your Mouth being put out as the last single was an even weirder pick and is probably their worst single. Take off that, Til The Day I Die and Untouchable and it's a fantastic album. Some really excellent album tracks on there. Cup Of Coffee is devastating and a career highlight. Parade should have been the first single really.

Also, I revisited Bleed Like Me recently and it was a lot better than I remembered. I'm still disappointed Run Baby Run was cancelled as a single. It's one of the most obvious hits in their career. The title track is so great too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8uuUkyv1x0

this remix is sooooooo much better than the album version of "bad boyfriend," can't believe it's the same song

so you're saying i should listen to the later albums i guess

are there not some clunkers on there?

Fewer than you think.

"The World Is Not Enough" pretty great bond theme

Just chiming into say their cover of 'Thirteen' is really lovely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO7fMJpUZoM

"Lovesong"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C5i89F6nvM