It has been a busy year for American-Scottish rockers Garbage. Last month they released a solid sixth studio album, Strange Little Birds, their first in four years, and have also been plugging away on an extensive world tour.
Drummer and producer Butch Vig says that the band is feeling rejuvenated.
Since the group's early heyday when they released three albums in six years – including two seminal releases: 1995's self-titled debut and Version 2.0 in 1998 – the group went on an extended hiatus following the release of Bleed Like Me in 2005. They returned in 2012 with Not Your Kind of People.
"When we came back to record Not Your Kind of People after a seven-year break, it felt really good," says Vig. "We had a great tour, then the 20th anniversary of [debut album] Garbage. We released a remastered box set of that album and did a short tour of maybe 30 shows and it was fantastic. We really connected with the fans and with playing that whole album and all the B-sides.
"We were writing Strange Little Birds at the same time. It's been out about a month now and it's had great reviews. It's quite a departure, very dark and cinematic, but that's the album we set out to make and it seems to have worked well."
Before success with Garbage, Vig was – and still is – renowned as a producer, most famously for spearheading the early 1990s grunge explosion with his work with Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth. He admits the Garbage sound, co-produced with guitarist Steve Marker and full of – at the time – daring experimentation with hip-hop, industrial rock and dance, was perhaps not what fans of his earlier, guitar-centric work expected.
“I think because of my history, people were expecting a grunge record, but Steve and I had been getting really excited about bands such as Public Enemy and read some articles about how they made their sound,” he says. “We went out and bought a couple of samplers. Pretty much everything – guitars, drums, vocals – all went through the samplers for processing before we put it back on analogue tape and it had a really distinctive sound.
“When we went back to remaster it recently, I think it still sounds really cool and unique. There were other bands using samplers at the time but we sort of came up with a sound on the record that wasn’t quite like anything else.
“There was no grand master plan, a lot of it was just experimenting in the studio. We felt really free when we made it because we had no intention to tour or a great long-term plan. It was a similar feeling with the new album because we’re on our own label now and can just kind of please ourselves.”
Looking back at the excitement that greeted Nirvana's Nevermind, Vig says the grunge masterpiece was a reaction to the "hair rock" and vapid pop that dominated the charts at the end of the 1980s.
A similar change is brewing, he says, as a reaction to the EDM DJs and overblown pop and hip-hop choking the airwaves.
“Music always goes in cycles, and when it becomes tedious, that leaves a door open for a fresh sound to come in,” he says. “That’s what happened with Nirvana. Coming out of the 1980s, people wanted something new.
“I feel like that could happen again anytime soon. The public gets bored with the current trends and needs a fresh perspective, not just sonically but lyrically, too, that they can connect to on an emotional level.”
cnewbould@thenational.ae