Album review: Garbage - Not Your Kind of People

RUMOURS of Garbage’s demise have been much exaggerated, and this first new material in seven years makes a fist of blending the spiky and snuggly sides of the band.

Garbage

Not Your Kind Of People

Stunvolume, £13.99

Rating: ****

The title track, strangely, sounds like the closing number from a yet-to-be-written stage show documenting how a gal from Edinburgh fell in with Nirvana’s record producer and his grizzly rock pals.

Shirley Manson’s solo album was reportedly shelved by the record company for being too leftfield, and her return to Garbage arguably has all the rough edges smoothed off and glossed over. Sugar and Felt play the pop game unconditionally, although single Battle In Me does manage to conjure up a sneer, if not a snarl, favouring the band’s penchant for syncopated skewed rock rhythms. The sensation is reprised on the bouncy barbs of Man On A Wire, which is blessed with all the verve and vigour found in the band’s best material in the early days. The opening Automatic Systematic Habit musically morphs Cream’s White Room into Lady Gaga, then the band goes for the commercial jugular on Blood For Poppies. I never thought I would hear Shirley build a chorus around the word “radio” though.

Download this: Control, Man On A Wire