Fourteen years ago producer Butch Vig, also the drummer for Garbage, produced for a relatively unknown band, fusing the punk rock do-it-yourself philosophy with a big, polished stadium rock sound. That band was Nirvana, the record "Nevermind."
The story from here is well known: armed with nothing but four chords and attitude, Nirvana tapped into the country's massive reserve of teenage angst and rendered the rock of the previous decade pointless. But the story didn't end there: every band to ever set foot in Seattle became a star, "grunge" became a bloated beast, Cobain couldn't deal with it, and, before we knew it, Fred Durst came dangerously close to becoming the voice of a generation.
In 1995, while grunge was dying a long and painful death, Vig, one of the men who had helped start the movement, along with several other studio musicians and the dynamic Shirley Manson, formed Garbage. Garbage injected some life into the struggling genre, utilizing Vig's slick production skills and scoring with hits such as "Only Happy when it Rains." However, from their newest release, "Bleed Like Me," it appears that Garbage, following in the same pattern as the grunge movement before them, is running out of steam.
Vig's production, which was a landmark on Nirvana's album, sounds tired here.
On many tracks the multi-layered guitars overwhelm Manson's vocals. The guitars, aiming for big power-chord hooks, sound cold and emotionless. The production has become too slick, sliding through one ear and out the other. You can listen to several songs and not even catch where one ends and the next picks up.
The title track is a good representation of the album as a whole. Owing more than a little to Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," Manson tells the disturbing stories of several troubled women. Lines like "Doodle takes Dad's scissors to her skin / And when she does relief comes setting in" are delivered with a feeling of detachment that carries through most of the album. Though Manson is singing about abusive relationships and desperation, a lot of the time we are left with a resounding feeling of "so what?"
Garbage sounds like they are going through the motions on this record. They are trying to emulate their mid-'90s glory. Rumors of band tension could explain the uninspired riffs and general lack of emotion on the record; Vig was briefly replaced with Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters front-man Dave Grohl. Intra-band strife may have helped Fleetwood Mac and The Beatles, but Garbage sounds like a collection of individual musicians, not a band.
There are bright spots on the album; unfortunately, they are the first two songs. The record kicks off with "Bad Boyfriend," which features Grohl on drums. The song is about Manson's desire for a boyfriend, whom she says she can keep "on ice to show all my friends." It is one of the few moments on the album where the production works.
The second and best song on the album is "Run Baby Run." What sets this song apart from the rest of the album is the sense of rhythm. While the album as a whole comes off as too stiff, here Manson's voice lilts over the power chords, while horns can be heard deep in the mix. It also follows the quiet verse, loud chorus dynamic popularized by - who else? - Nirvana. Yet it is one of the only songs on the album that has its own personality, and is also the closest the record ever gets to pop.
"Bleed Like Me" is not a bad record; it simply doesn't stand out. The band seems complacent about sounding completely average. Fourteen years after the birth of grunge, Garbage's latest release should make it obvious that the genre, along with most of modern rock, is just as tired as '80s metal was.
There are moments on "Bleed Like Me" where you can sense that the band they were 10 years ago still exists in some capacity, but it's just not enough to sustain a whole album. It is an album that at best has fleeting moments of promise and at worst is content with boredom.
