Garbage: Blood for Poppies (Review)

1990s alt rockers Garbage are back with the first release off of their highly anticipated album Not Your Kind of People (due May 15^th). Garbage is definitely not your kind of people (or music) if you like the regurgitated and processed pop, watered down trip hop, and formulaic rock that dominates Top 40 these days. Even though at their height (and introduction actually) Garbage wasn’t very alt anything and many decried legendary producer Butch Vig’s project as a watered down NIN rip off with a sexy and trashy sounding and looking alterna-chick for a front man (uh..woman), but then again who in the ‘90s wasn’t compared to Trent Reznor if they employed any type of electronic/industrial sound in their music? Garbage was one of the most unique sounding rock acts that hit the airwaves nearly twenty years ago, and still are today. In fact, no one sounds like them right now. Perhaps an injection of “NIN rip offs with a sexy chick singer” is just what “modern rock” needs.  

Speaking of that sexy front woman, Shirley Manson might not have the bloom of youth upon her cheek anymore these days, but her voice is just as sharp, powerful, and sultry as it was in days of youth gone by, and she’s still plenty hot in the looks department… Vocally weaving in, out, and between Butch Vig’s beats and guitarist Steve Marker’s chucky riffing, Manson ties us listeners up in sexy yet comfortingly reassuring sonic knots. Masterfully delivering jumping, staccato, up and down tones, nearly rapped lines, and expansive overdubbed choruses, Manson once again proves that she is one of the most talented and recognizable female rock/alt rock vocalists of all time.  

Coming off producing The Foo Fighters latest multi-Grammy winning album Wasting Light, mastermind Butch Vig must have been feeling reinvigorated as “Blood for Poppies” is one of the most catchy, yet completely recognizable as a Garbage song, Garbage song he’s written in some time. Garbage’s 2005’s highly underrated and totally excellent album Bleed Like Me, with its monstrous and hard rocking tracks like “Why Do You Love Me” and “Bad Boyfriend,” was a departure from the usual electronic laced sounds of Garbage’s earlier albums. Vig returns the band to original form here. While “Blood for Poppies” is its own unique composition that heralds Garbage’s new/return to form era, it would have fit well on Version 2.0. 

Basically, if “Blood for Poppies” is simply a taste of what we’re to expect from Not Your Kind of People, May 15^th can’t get here soon enough. 

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars