Archival Interview: Shirley Manson/Garbage (2016)

From the outset, Garbage have been a band with an explicit goal of speaking to (and for) outsiders. They championed the queerest of the queer and the strangest of the strange with one of their earliest singles (1995’s Queer) and they broke their 2000s hiatus with an album called Not Your Kind Of People in 2012.

But, with time’s passing, that idea of advocacy has slowly grown to be less philosophical and increasingly political. While popular culture has in many ways gotten more liberal in the past 20 years, a surfeit of rising movements and extreme ideologies have ensured the marginalised in society continue to be especially preyed upon, which has forced Garbage to reconsider their message.

“As we’ve gotten older… Or, I should say, as I’ve gotten older — I can’t speak for the rest of the band — I’ve become more and more political,” frontwoman Shirley Manson confirms. “I was not particularly political when I was young. I didn’t really understand what ‘politics’ really meant, in a way. But, ever since my sister had two children, I’ve become like a crazed tiger.”

She laughs, “You know, I have to protect the young. If anything, I feel our next record might be even more political. I won’t really know until we hit the studio. But, right now, I think it’s the duty of the artist to reflect what’s going on in our culture and those who are not doing that are doing us all a disservice, in a way.”

Manson is calling from Russia, where the band are touring in support of their most recent album Strange Little Birds. It’s a confronting experience for the group. For an outfit who have explored gender politics and sexuality since their inception — as well as the aforementioned Queer, there’s also been singles like 2002’s Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!) and 2001’s Androgyny — Putin’s Russia is challenging.

“It’s interesting. The first time we came to Russia was 20 years ago. We played a huge show where our security was basically the army. In riot gear. With kalashnikovs,” Manson reminisces. “People were visibly really struggling. It was a very humbling experience. People didn’t talk about politics at all. We used our eyes and saw that it was a struggling economy.”

“And, then, we’ve returned on this trip… And, it’s been like visiting any other international capital city. You can see progress has been made. At what cost, I don’t know,” she reflects. “But, this trip has been particularly resonating with us, because, for the first time, we’ve arrived in a country and realised that we, ourselves, will soon be going home to a government that’s equally restrictive.”

It’s an interesting position for a band like Garbage that have always walked a strange line of contradictions and complications. Founded by three producers (drummer Butch Vig produced Nirvana’s Nevermind), Garbage’s roots lie in studio experimentation and pop production. But, through Manson’s lyrical outlook, the band have always embodied a stark, human vulnerability.

Strange Little Birds is a case in point. The band’s second album since their 2012 return, …Birds found Manson and collaborators shirking the overt pop- and rock-influenced aesthetics of previous albums for something more textured, electronic and cinematic that also doubles as Manson’s most personal and political album. Yet, it’s been hailed as their best album in 15 years.

“It’s always gratifying when you get a positive response, full stop. But just to be able to delve into more adult themes on this record was a relief for me,” Manson says. “You know, I work with men who are much more careful than I am. I am definitely someone who believes that I’m here for such a short time and I want to be as honest as I can be; that’s who I am and how I want to live my life.”

“I think it’s necessary for us all to be as honest as possible. Unfortunately in the cultures we’re currently living in, everybody’s fronting and pretending and not feeling comfortable telling the truth about how they feel or what their true intentions are — and this causes a web of chaos and deceit and distrust. If ever there was a time when our global community needed to pull together, it’s now.”

“We need to try and really be as forthright with one another as we can be so that we can start to solve these incredibly big divides that currently exist between people,” the frontwoman continues. “Because, ultimately, we’re all the same. We all want the same thing. We all want peace and quiet. We want freedom for our families and we want a roof over our head. That’s a universal truth.”

Manson has, over the years, become the default ambassador for Garbage’s contradictions. As an artist, she is one with contradictions. The snarling, growling, purring frontwoman above the cacophony who has frequently spoken (and sung) of her insecurities as an artist and as a musician — her effects-heavy vocal delivery initially a way of disguising her perceived flaws as a singer.

“I had an incredible sort of realisation, a little while back,” she says. “I adopted a rescue dog, for the first time in my life, and I took her to doggy training class and the trainer said, ‘There’s no such thing as an aggressive dog; only a fearful dog,’ and, when she said that, the penny dropped. I am the fearful dog. That’s why I’m an aggressive dog. My dog has really helped instruct me.

“I’ve always spent my life powerless. I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve always been very aggressive, in a way. I’m definitely an aggressive musician and I’ve aggressively articulated myself throughout my career and I think one of the reasons for that is because I’ve always known I’m powerless. I’ve always known I’m at risk. I feel I’ve got a real acute, animalistic sense of the world.”

But, for all their contradictions and complications, Garbage have always embodied a utopian vision of music. A world wherein rock, pop, technology, gender and the avant-garde exist on equal footing to be manipulated and subverted as suits. A world where the slightest voice can also be the loudest. To this end, their increased interest in politics is not only unsurprising, but also expected.

“We’ve always been vocal about gender politics. But, on this record, we definitely got much more overtly political about the world we were living in and how we saw where the world was moving. We were really dismayed by a lot of the intolerance towards immigrants and Muslims. The prevailing ignorance about what it means to be a Muslim or to be Islamic.”

Manson muses, “On Strange Little Birds, there’s a song called So We Can Stay Alive. It was almost a prediction, in a way, of where our world was heading. We were all very conscious that we were living in precarious times. I spoke about it a lot in the lead-up to the release of the record. We were all aware that it was time to be more vocal.”