LISTEN
I
don’t know what propelled me,” says founding
Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson of her new,
chic, candy-pink dye job. “I woke up one day and
thought, ‘I cannot stay red-haired for one second
longer!’ My hairdresser didn’t want to do it. But
I needed a break from myself. When she pulled the
towel from my head and I saw my pink hair, I burst
into this huge grin and gasped, ‘I look amazing!’ And
I’ve never said that about myself in my entire life.”
This is a woman who, since Garbage’s first electro-
tinged, trip-hop traced, self-titled album in 1995, has
challenged what it means to rock hard and – with her
mix of combat boots, acid-bright clothes and black
eyeliner – has looked great doing it. With her band,
she has seven Grammy nominations and sold more
than 17 million records. She’s kicked open doors for
every modern-day pop-rock heroine, from Charli XCX
to Karen O. She’s even recorded a Bond theme (1999’s
“The World Is Not Enough”).But what would Garbage be if
Manson – who somehow turned 50
this year – wasn’t still tapping into
the insecurities that have fuelled the
group’s most iconically angst-ridden
hits? “Sometimes I look in the
mirror, feel my shoulders slump and
am disappointed with what I see,”
she says. “And I have imaginary
voices about what people might say
about me having pink hair at 50.
But I’m at that point where I don’t
give a fuck if you think it’s
appropriate or not. Go fuck yourself
and be boring! I want to be free to
explore the person I want to be.”
You’ll find that person on
Garbage’s sixth studio album Strange Little Birds, which
the band is currently touring Down Under. Recorded
with bandmates Butch Vig, Duke Erikson and Steve
Marker, mostly in Vig’s basement studio, it’s the second
release on Garbage’s own indie imprint, Stunvolume,
formed in 2012 after a rocky seven-year stretch of
break-ups and make-ups initiated by the troubled
production of 2005’s Bleed Like Me.
Garbage’s newest effort is their darkest, most raw
and most immediate album since their 1995 debut,
with Birds’ 11 tracks thriving on Manson’s seductive
but sorrowful voice – high, dry and confrontational –
amid crashing-and-slashing guitars, slinky bass lines
and rumbling buzz-saw beats. It’s a bold production
choice that enhances Manson’s unflinching ruminations
on self-loathing and ageing (“Youth and beauty don’t
remain,” she sings on “Teaching Little Fingers To Play”),
which stand to strike a nerve among the grown-up
gen-X girls she once inspired to stockpile up-to-there
shift dresses and vivid red hair colour.
But while Strange Little Birds is reminiscent of
Garbage (which the band played in its entirety on last
year’s 20th anniversary tour), Manson isn’t living
her life in the rear view. “I don’t believe in
nostalgia,” she says. “Nostalgia connotes a desire to
return to a moment in time, and I don’t want to go
back. I want to see what’s next. That, to me, is much
more interesting.” Her fashion choices, too, point
forward. Gone is the woman who went braless under
a halter dress emblazoned with art from the band’s
Version 2.0 album to the 1999 Grammys, following it
up a year later with a Britney-baiting schoolgirl skirt.
These days, she takes to the stage in, say, an MSGM
satin smock with side pockets (still pink, though).
According to Manson, it’s all about a wardrobe ]THE
INFORMATION
AGE
With a gritty, aggressive new album
and an Australian tour, Garbage’s
Shirley Manson takes her alt-rock
revolution into its next phaseELLE.COM.AU / @ELLEAUS 69