Garbage Liberates With No Gods No Masters
Garbage’s newest album No Gods No Masters is loaded with more electronica sounding songs than any of their previous albums. Yet it’s also one of their hardest rocking albums. The live instrumentation is discernible but often washed in a digital bath that distorts everything into a sort of electronic shower. This is particularly the case with “Creeps” and “Uncomfortably Me,” two of the album’s early tracks. Conversely, the album’s lead single “The Men Who Rule The World” displays the recognizable guitar crunch of the type of rock that Garbage has perfected over the years. “Wolves” resurrects the hard rocking Garbage of those aforementioned years, but interestingly strikes a balance between loud club music atmospherics and straightforward guitar riffs. Sometimes the two become interchangeable, making “Wolves” one of the most interesting sounding songs on the album. It’s the type of song that will easily exist in a live setting comfortably along the band’s other guitar centric and electronica influenced songs.
Garbage is a band that has always had something interesting to say with their music. The sometimes jarring mix of rock and electronics this time out is essential to what Garbage is getting on about with this set of music and lyrics, and it’s actually rather poignant. The track “Waiting for God” sums up the album thematically and musically. For an album whose title is “No God No Masters,” God, or at least some type of benevolent deity, is desperately being sought out underneath all the outward denial. “Waiting for God to show up/we’re keeping our finger crossed” sings Shirley Manson as she bewails “black boys shot in the back” and various other social injustices. She even recites part of The Lord’s Prayer, with only a smidge of irony, during the song’s outro. This bipolar rejection/longing to fill a God shaped hole is brilliantly reflected in the bipolar nature of Garbage’s club-rock/electronica-rock music. Garbage, an ironic misnomer of a name for a band with a gorgeous and talented lead singer as well as a multitalented producer/band leader in Butch Vig, has been dabbling in oddly ironic juxtapositions since their first single, but rarely have been as artistic about it for an entire album as they are here.
The band lays the irony on thick with “Godhead”, a smoldering track that thrives on its shock value. “Would you see me if I had a dick?/Would you hear me?/See me?/Would you ever fucking leave me?” “Godhead” becomes a double entendre. “Anonymous XXX” layers on the sexual tension, with God again making a lyrical appearance this time as “love” of the anonymous and carnal type. “A Woman Destroyed” labors under a different kind of tension: an almost horror film worthy grind propels a frightening narrative of “shattered love” and warnings against “walking home in the dark alone” while Manson’s protagonist plots her “revenge.” “Flipping The Bird” engages in the type of alternating stuttering guitar effects and clean tones that propelled some of their highest charting singles. It’s a solid song, but feels slightly out of place with its backwards looking sound.
Arriving late in the album, title track “No Gods No Masters” with its tripping beat and lighter sound serves as a powerfully cleansing experience. As Manson sings about there being “No Masters or Gods to obey/I make the same mistakes over and over again” admitting that in the end, we are the only ones responsible for our fates…and our pasts. Rejecting or embracing a god or master in the end is irrelevant when ultimate responsibility, and therefore choice, lies with each of us. To close out the album, “This City Will Kill You” entrancingly lulls you as it lets you down gently as Manson’s lush vocals float amongst a downtempo groove.
Garbage occupies a unique niche in contemporary alt-rock music. They’ve been around long enough to continue to remain in heavy rotation on 90s retro rock radio (satellite or other), yet still, possess enough artistic inspiration to remain on the cutting edge of modern rock music. While no longer avant-garde, they are still years ahead of their peers, both young and old.
