Gig review: Garbage, Glasgow Barrowland

By DAVID POLLOCK
Published on 05/07/2012 01:35

FOR a band as steeped in designer gloom as Garbage, they couldn’t have choreographed a better day to make their live return to Scotland. The skies were the colour of misery, the heavens had emptied several times over and the prophecy in the title of their finale and most fondly-remembered hit Only Happy When It Rains was fulfilled.

Inside, however, it was roasting hot. “I’m sweating,” announced Shirley Manson, looking wistfully around the venue, “I’d forgotten what it was like here.”

For the Edinburgh-born singer this was a homecoming as much as a comeback, taking time out between the discordant squall of Control and the sleazy bubblegum pop of Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go) to insist that her watching niece doesn’t imitate “Auntie Shirley’s” swearing. She’s been playing this venue since she was a 15-year-old, so 30 years, and there was a dedication of the track Special to her old Goodbye Mr Mackenzie mentor and boyfriend Martin Metcalfe. “Without him I wouldn’t have a career,” she said. “I kind of hate him, but I love him too. Is that allowed?”

Surrounded by drummer and respected producer Butch Vig and the rest of her all-American band, Manson – strutting in red leopard-print hotpants – proved to be a wonderful frontwoman, and one devoid of any of the transatlantic affectation which Scots audiences seem to dislike in their returning heroes. She sang the grinding sleaze-rock of Bad Boyfriend directly at a lad half her age in the front row and exercised an energetic holler during Stupid Girl, Paranoid and Vow. She never thought she’d be doing this three decades on, she said, “especially being a woman, a Scottish woman and all”, but it’s all down to her own energy and ability that she is.

Rating: ****