BEAUTY IN TRAUMA...
Garbage revisit ‘forgotten’ third LP
In associationciation withthwith
IN SHIRLEY Manson’s mind, Garbage’s third album, Beautiful Garbage, will forever be tied up with the September 11 terror attacks.
“It was an international trauma,” the Scottish singer explains.
“We were really excited... but two weeks before it got its debut the world changed.”
The band were grounded at their studio in Wisconsin, just as they were meant to fly to London to begin promoting the record.
“We were trapped, of course, like everybody else — all Americans. We couldn’t fly.”
Manson recalls “the toll it took on the world and also on us, and also on our record”.
Beautiful Garbage suffered from a lack of promotion and its lead single, Androgyny, faltered in the charts.
But Edinburgh-born Manson (55) and her American bandmates — Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig — have revisited the record on its 20th anniversary.
And there’s much to love: electronica and hip-hop collide with the band’s alternative rock sound, and 1960s girl group and 1980s new wave acts inform its melodies.
This anniversary, of course, comes shortly after that of September 11.
“We had enjoyed such a fantastic trajectory as a band,” she says, simultaneously indignant and self- deprecating.
“We had 16 playlisted singles on Radio 1 in the United Kingdom, which of course is my country so it means so much to me.
“That all came to a stunning end with the release of the first single off Beautiful Garbage, which was Androgyny.”
The band remember holding a crisis meeting with their label boss just before going on stage at Top of the Pops, in which they were told Androgyny had not been playlisted for Radio 1.
“It was the end of that record already,” she sighs.
Beautiful Garbage was not a failure commercially or critically but it did not make the impact the band had hoped.
In the intervening two decades, there has been something of a reappraisal, especially of lead single Androgyny.
“Being a woman who has got a lot of male traits, I’ve always really identified with this idea of nonbinary,” she offers.
“So the idea of identifying within the spectrum of gender has always made sense to me.
“We took a lot of chances on that record – for which we were gloriously punished,” she says with a cackle.
“Now that we’re 20 years down the road, we’re still playing a lot of these songs in our live sets, and some of the songs on that record are our most beloved.
“It feels like a triumph.”
The 20th anniversary reissue of Beautiful Garbage is released on November 5.