Album review: Garbage, Strange Little Birds

Some bands burn brightly and fade quickly. Others outstay their welcome and in the process spoil their legacy. By 2005, Scottish-American rockers Garbage unquestionably belonged to the second category.

Stitched stylishly together from the left-overs of grunge and trip-hop their debut album, Garbage, had been a tour-de-force. Yet their one good idea was not enough to sustain a decade-plus career, no matter that singer Shirley Manson made for a consistently compelling front woman.

There were certainly few mourners as they limped off stage following the commercial underperformance of their farewell LP, Bleed Like Me.

Thus it appeared a safe assumption that Manson and company’s 2012 reunion would be… well, a bit rubbish. Initially, fans’ worst fears appeared confirmed with comeback long-player Not Your Kind Of People reeking of pallid pastiche.

However, Garbage were meanwhile doubling down on their reputation as a ferocious live band and much of that force has been harnessed on their sixth album, which sees the quartet return to the polished frenzy of formative hits like ‘Vow’, ‘Only Happy When It Rains’ and ‘Supervixen’.

Manson’s dagger-drawn vocals find a perfect foil in shimmering riffs on ‘Blackout’ and ‘We Can Never Tel’l; the haunting unease of early ballads such as ‘Milk and Queer’ is reprised on ‘Night Drive Loneliness’.

New single ‘Empty’ is, for its part, one of the best things they’ve ever done — a rollicking romp that suggests Nirvana fronted by Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

It can seem fashionable nowadays to disparage artists for going back to they original sound. Yet Garbage have made exactly the right move in reverting to first principles and, along the way, assembled their most truly essential collection since their debut.