Garbage After a Seven-Year Hiatus For
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MUSIC WITH SALLY BROWNE PLAYLIST COUNTRY BLOWN AWAY CARRIE UNDERWOOD ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Being tied to the American Idol Her fourth album employs the brand has served 2005 winner same strategy: clapped beats and Carrie Underwood well. spunky guitar riffs, country-pop Underwood not only strikes a hybrids and lyrical storytelling. chord with country-music While the album doesn’t quite live enthusiasts, but occasionally up to its title, one can’t accuse traverses into mainstream popular Underwood of false advertising, music with catchy rock beats and either. well-crafted hooks and choruses. Karen Tye POP . LITTLE BROKEN HEARTS NORAH JONES ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ There’s something different about showcase the singer’s evolution. Norah Jones on . Little Broken Rocking first single Happy Pills is Hearts. She injects some also delightfully poppy. While this heartache into this record, a album starts a little too slowly collaboration with producer with Good Morning, overall Jones’s Danger Mouse, giving it a bit more fifth solo album contains much- edge than her previous placid needed spark, while staying true outings. The melodic Say Goodbye to her bluesy roots. REBEL WITH and the sultry title track Samantha Landy HIP-HOP APPLAUSE FIRST SERVE DE LA SOUL Spurred by the lack of feisty women in mainstream music, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Shirley Manson reformed Garbage after a seven-year hiatus for De La Soul have done it again – It is a concept album – think Ugly an album of anthems for the outsiders, writes Sally Browne and in the same vein as the Tupac Duckling’s Taste the Secret – that hologram at Coachella, there is an takes the listener on a happy almost ghostly and captivating journey with fictional characters he ‘‘get the band back together’’ But it’s been seven years since Garbage released quality to their most recent Witter and Barrow as they try to conversations began when Shirley a new album. Their last tour ended early amid a offering First Serve. The album become rap stars. Skits help the Manson was sitting down to dinner with crumbling relationship with their record takes fans back to the halcyon narrative along while paying T her agent friend. company. Garbage felt they had been sold down days, alluding to the full hip-hop homage to hip-hop’s golden era. Her agent was lamenting the fact there the river to a major label that didn’t care about sounds of the ’90s and early 2000s. Lauren Bruce were few cool female role models out there. Back them. ‘‘It got really, really bad. It got obstructive, in the 1990s (was it so long ago?) Shirley Manson, as oppressive and frustrating,’’ Manson says. the lead singer of Garbage, rocked on to the scene – Now, though, they’re experiencing a renewed FOLK ROCK a smart-talking, quick-witted, sassy and talented vigour with the release of their fifth album Not woman who exuded girl power before the Spice Your Kind of People on their own label Stunvolume. MY HEAD IS AN ANIMAL Girls wrapped it in a McDonald’s wrapper and sold It’s a welcome return to force. And so we have OF MONSTERS AND MEN it as fast food. the band’s agent to thank. And when you hear ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Teamed with the writing and production credits Manson tell the story, in her inimitable Scottish of Butch Vig – who has supplied his Midas touch to accent, it goes something like this: ‘‘She kind of records by Nirvana, Green Day and Foo Fighters – gave me a ball-kick. What is your problem? Why From the opening lines, the debut going on in the lyrics: howling and bandmates Duke Erikson and Steve Marker, are you not out there making music? We need album from this Icelandic sextet is ghosts, entwining seaweed, they made an unstoppable foursome. women in bands. We need feisty girls. We need a stunner, hauling in listeners like lurking sharks. With vocals shared They wrote songs that didn’t seem to fit in any girls who are going to push up against the fish in a dragnet with its haunting by male and female singers, the genre, yet were in everybody’s record collection. mainstream a little. Get your finger out of your and dramatic lyrics, rousing chorus atmosphere perfectly captures They were on every music channel and in every arse, get off the couch, what are we going to do to and anthemic melodies. The high sub-arctic harshness. Truly, a music magazine. They released four studio get you out of this inertia?’’ drama of the folk-flavoured monster of an album. albums, followed those up with world tours, and Not that Manson, 45, has been idle during those arrangements reflects what’s Graeme Hammond sold 13 million records. seven years. U ON SUNDAY . May 13. 2012 32 She has, in her words, ‘‘bought a just perception. It’s not much more house, learnt how to drive, adopted a than your own perception of self. And dog, got married, made a record, then I wasn’t a very confident child. Even GIG became an actress on a TV show, when we were the top of the charts GUIDE travelled all over the world to India and first hit the airways, I was riddled and Africa and Bhutan and Laos’’. with insecurity, and now I look back ‘‘I had a life, you know.’’ and think ‘You silly girl, you wasted In 2010, she married producer and such time and energy worrying about Garbage sound engineer Billy Bush; not being good enough’, and in fact the TV role was as an ass-kicking that was just my own perception of SHOW BOOKINGS 1800 014 014 Terminator: The TROY CASSAR-DALEY AND killing machine on myself at the time.’’ OR VISIT www.twintowns.com.au Sarah Connor Chronicles (‘‘I was It was a sentiment expressed in HARMONY JAMES totally typecast,’’ she laughs); and the Garbage’s classic hit song, Stupid Girl. Brothers Leagues Club, Cairns, today www.facebook.com/twintowns solo record was never released. ‘‘We all have these terrible 2pm. But for Manson, who has been in negative voices,’’ Manson admits. JAMES $ bands since she was a rebellious ‘‘All human beings do, and PRINCE MORRISON 45 teenager in Edinburgh, it was sometimes we make the mistake of Brisbane Entertainment Centre, AND EMMA PASK refreshing to discover a life outside of listening to them too well.’’ May 18 and May 26. ticketek.com.au music. There are so many dimensions She may not have ‘‘figured it all 132 849. FRI 18 MAY 8.30PM that make up a good life, beyond fame out’’ as she’s got older, but she’s and fortune, and Manson admits that definitely found ways of drowning out NICKI MINAJ with current generations, there seems the negative self-talk. Brisbane Entertainment Centre, to be an unhealthy obsession with ‘‘I’ve found a way to go ‘Here May 19. ticketek.com.au 132 849. celebrity and the spotlight. comes that really scary, nasty voice While famous people, whether they that tells me I’m not good enough. I’m BARRIE GOTT’S like it or not, by default often have going to turn that voice down and QUEENSLAND POPS that weighty side-career of being role soldier on with my day’. I don’t have QPAC, May 19. The famous models, that blueprint shouldn’t be time for that nonsense.’’ orchestra’s On Broadway show. just to be another famous person. In terms of role models, Manson 2pm and 8pm. ‘‘In the last decade, people’s says she admired the prickly, spiky obsession with so-called celebrity and characters such as Chrissie Hynde of NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK fame and the spotlight and crooked the Pretenders or Patti Smith. AND BACKSTREET BOYS notions of what success is through ‘‘There’s lots of girls I admire Brisbane Entertainment Centre, watching reality shows has skewed (today), but I don’t necessarily relate May 23. ticketek.com.au 132 849. everyone’s perceptions about what to,’’ she says. ‘‘I look at Beyonce and I success is or should be,’’ she says. admire her enormously, as an artist, a BOY AND BEAR ‘‘To me success is doing something performer and a person, but I can’t Andergrove Tavern, Mackay, May 23; that makes you happy. Going home at possibly relate to her. There’s a dearth The Venue, Townsville, May 24; night and being happy in your home of women I can relate to and they are Brothers Leagues, Cairns, May 25. with whoever you’ve chosen to live the women who tend to be the your life with, the occupation you’ve outsiders, the agitators, the rebels.’’ ADAM HARVEY WITH chosen to do in your life. That’s Those outsiders are enshrined in AMBER LAWRENCE success. The showbiz side of success is the title track of Garbage’s Not Your City Golf Club, Toowoomba, May 25; really transient and irrelevant and Kind of People. Beaudesert Centre for Arts and somewhat boring,’’ she laughs. ‘‘The sentiment behind that song Culture, May 26; Ipswich Civic Centre, Despite a seemingly perfect is actually an inversion of constantly May 27. package, Manson has always been feeling we are outsiders. I think we open and honest about her have managed to invert that idea of TIM FREEDMAN insecurities and imperfections – she feeling left out to instead embracing The Venue, Townsville, June 1; was relatable. Although she is our outsider status and welcoming Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns, June 2. confident now, it wasn’t an easy path. other people to join us,’’ Manson says. ‘‘It’s probably taken me a long ‘‘That’s kind of how I see that title.