Garbage Survive “Bleed”
Early into Garbage’s recording of their fourth album, Bleed Like Me, due April 12th, long-simmering tensions in the band got bad — very bad.
“I would go to the studio with a sick feeling in my stomach,” says drummer/producer Butch Vig. “And I could tell everybody was feeling that way.”
But after quitting the band for almost four months, Vig returned to resurrect the project. “It’s like we’d been married for ten years,” he says, “and it was worth it to try one more time.”
“It took us a while to all get on the same page,” says singer Shirley Manson. “It’s just the nature of human beings: You just want to do your own thing after a while, but you’re bound together as a band — sort of like Siamese twins.”
The fruits of their labor are eleven tracks of raw, guitar-heavy pop with dark, biting lyrics, accented by Garbage’s signature electronic effects. “Metal Heart,” a political rant shrouded in layers of violin samples and techno beats, was inspired by the hype surrounding the war in Iraq. “You just start questioning everything after a while,” Manson says. “You can’t believe a fuckin’ damn thing you see or hear. I got to the point where I felt like a real paranoid liberal.”
Other highlights include “Run Baby Run,” which has tender, dreamy verses that call to mind the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” and “Bad Boyfriend,” featuring Foo Fighters frontman (and ex-Nirvana drummer) Dave Grohl on the kit. “He was sitting there pounding the song out with a shit-eating grin on his face,” says Vig, who famously produced Nirvana’s 1991 breakthrough, Nevermind. “It was fuckin’ great!”
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