CD REVIEW: GARBAGE – Strange Little Birds

Shane | 21 July 2016 | Reply

CD REVIEW: GARBAGE – Strange Little Birds
StunVolume through Mushroom
20 April, 2016
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8/10

With music moving so fast it’s hard for a band to stay relevant – and those that try usually fall into the ‘try too hard’ category. So it’s always great to hear a vintage band who are prepared to embrace new technology but play to all their sonic strengths – after all, isn’t that why they were a hit in the first place?

Garbage flew high over four albums which perfectly captured the dark alt-angst vibe of the ‘90s, and returned from hiatus with 2012’s so-so Not Your Kind Of People. The good news is that Strange Little Birds finds the band just being themselves rather than trying too hard, and the result is a far better album than its predecessor.

Singer Shirley Manson has stated that the album was in part a reaction to all the “incredibly happy and shiny and poppy” music out there, and it’s true that Garbage have not lost the darkness that always throbbed at the core of their soul. Manson, Butch Vig, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker may be older & wiser, but they have lost none of the fire in their bellies to create music that bares their beating hearts and moves their listeners in one direction or another.

As the music swirls around her, Manson is the eye of the hurricane here, cooing about love and heartbreak, fear and pain, laying herself bare through winning tracks like Sometimes, Empty, Night Drive Loneliness, the riffy Magnetized and album closer Amends.

At once pop, electronic, goth rock and captivatingly, darkly melodic, Strange Little Birds may not be ‘shiny happy pop’, but the humanity at the heart of it makes it more relevant than most new releases of 2016.