Released on 15 August 1995 "Garbage" was the debut studio album by US band Garbage. The album was met with critical acclaim upon its release, being viewed
by some as an innovative recording for its time. It reached number 20 on
the US Billboard 200 and number six on the UK Albums Chart. The album spawned five singles "Vow", "Only Happy When It Rains", "Queer", "Stupid Girl" & "Milk".
The Garbage story dated 1983 when Butch Vig and Steve Marker founded Smart Studios y Madison, Wisconsin, Vig's production work brought him to the attention of Sub Pop. Vig's old band Spooner reunited in 1990 and released another record, but disbanded in 1993 as Vig's and Marker's careers as producers gained strength. In 1994, as Vig became "kind of burned out on doing really long records", he got together with Duke Erikson and Marker, and they started producing remixes for acts such as U2, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and House of Pain,
featuring different instrumentation and often highlighting new guitar
hooks and bass grooves. The experience inspired the three men to form a
band, in which they "wanted to take that remix sensibility and somehow
translate it into all of the possibilities of a band setup."
Shirley Manson had been performing with the Edinburgh-based rock band Goodbye Mr Mackenzie since 1984. In 1993, several of the members, including Manson, formed the side project Angelfish. Their only studio album, Angelfish, was as commercially unsuccessful as preceding albums by Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, selling only 10,000 copies. Marker was watching 120 Minutes
when he saw the one-time airing of the music video for Angelfish's
"Suffocate Me". He showed the video to Erikson and Vig while their
manager, Shannon O'Shea, tracked Manson down. When Manson was contacted,
she didn't know who Vig was and was urged to check the credits on Nirvana's album Nevermind,
which Vig had produced.
On April 8, 1994, Manson met Erikson, Marker
and Vig for the first time in London. Later that evening Vig was
informed of Kurt Cobain's suicide. Garbage was put on hold as Angelfish was touring North America in support of Live. Erikson, Marker and Vig attended the Metro Chicago
date, and Manson was invited to Madison to audition for the band. The
audition did not go well, but Manson socialized with the men while there
and they found they had a similar taste in music. Angelfish disbanded
at the end of the Live tour. Manson called O'Shea and asked to audition
again, feeling that "it would work out".
In her return to Smart Studios, Manson began to work on skeletal versions of the songs "Queer", "Vow" and "Stupid Girl". While looking for a record deal for the album, Garbage sent out demo tapes with no bio, to avoid a bidding war over Vig's production history. Garbage signed with Mushroom Records UK worldwide and to Jerry Moss's label Almo Sounds for North America.
Garbage has a sound that "tried to incorporate different styles and genres,
throw it all into a big melting pot and see what would happen",
according to Vig. Vig explained that as in his opinion "the most exciting bands are those
who incorporate all those elements of punk, funk, techno, hip hop,
etc." Garbage would attempt to do the same and "take those influences
and make them work in the context of a pop song." The band went overboard with experimentation, with Erikson adding that
throughout they liked to include "sounds that we found accidentally,
like Steve's sample of a tape deck backing up, or the bit in 'Stupid
Girl' that was initially a mistake, but when we slowed it down, actually
fit the timbre and pace of the song and became the hook."
The lyrics on the record were described by the band members as "a
collaborative psycho-therapy session wherein personal demons of various
sizes and importance are exorcised, vilified, taken revenge upon and
laid to rest." Vig said they tried to deal with "dark themes that I
think a lot of people can relate to in some way or another", which
included voyeurism, hedonism, perversion, obsession and "the art of
self-destruction." Manson stated that even though she put together most of the songs,
"everybody has ideas that come to the table and I just use what I fancy.
When we're working on something, the lyrics take a while to work on and
[they] come to me and say 'I've had these ideas, use them if you want'
and if there's something I like, I'll stick it in with my own, or
vice-versa. Some people come in going 'I've got this great title for a
song' and I might use that." Manson remarked that while the content was "a lot more poppy" than most
of her previous work, the songs invoked the dark side of her nature, as
"sometimes I'm a wee bit creepy, and that definitely comes out in the
music." She also declared that music "unlocks sensations and feelings that you
keep inside, that society doesn't allow you to show", saying that the
gist of a mean-spirited song like "Vow" is very real despite "none of us
hav[ing] ever really acted on those feelings". Vig added that the band was eager to exploit the contrast between words
and music: "The initial idea was to make this a dark lyric with a
shiny, happy, pop sensibility. You could be singing this really catchy
line and realize the lyrics were totally wacked."
Garbage was acclaimed by contemporary critics, highlighting the band's songwriting was just as exceptional as
Vig's guitar and drum sounds, highlighting the "menacing sexuality,
sonic playfulness, inventive guitar treatments, and cool vocals by
Shirley Manson". Others hailed it as the closest to "perfection as a pop/rock record" as can be. The musical techniques used on Garbage
were radical at the time and influenced subsequent popular music, uniting distorted guitars and cool female vocals, a very straight-forward album, intellingent and current that still 30 years later still can hear it fresh and innovative.
Garbage Track List:
1. Supervixen
2. Queer
3. Only Happy When It Rains
4. As Heaven Is Wide
5. Not My Idea
6. A Stroke Of Luck
7. Vow
8. Stupid Girl
9. Dog New Tricks
10. My Lover's Box
11. Fix Me Now
12. Milk
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario