The Daily Telegraph - Features
Garbage, a tricky band to love? What rubbish!
Garbage
Wembley Arena
★★★★☆
“We have been a very complicated band to love,” admitted Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson at Wembley Arena on Saturday night. The Scottish-American alt-rockers played the venue in 1999 at the height of their powers after their successful second album, Version 2.0. But in the quarter-century since, they’ve encountered choppier waters: amid the commercial hits and countless film and TV syncs, there have been lost record deals and hiatuses, and a musical identity that always kept them on the fringes.
With three producers in the band – including drummer Butch Vig, who produced Nirvana’s seminal album Nevermind
– Garbage records tend towards being over-produced. But on stage in Wembley, that sonic excess took a backseat. Thanks to looser live arrangements, the band sounded satisfyingly heavy, grittier and more dynamic than on their albums.
Providing contrast to the abrasive riffs and synths was Manson, wearing a gentle explosion of pink tulle. Charismatic, cordial, swearing like a sailor, the Edinburgh-born singer talked so much between songs, the band came dangerously close to breaking curfew.
Her remarkable singing voice slipped comfortably between angry and sexy, and the mood was triumphant: it was the last night of the band’s first UK tour since Covid, and their biggest venue in the country in quite some time. The show felt like a deserved victory lap, but not a total nostalgia trip – the setlist featured plenty of songs from Garbage’s most recent album, 2021’s No Gods No Masters, and tracks such as Wolves proved why that album was widely hailed as a return to form – the form evinced in hits such as 2001’s Stupid Girl and 1995’s Only Happy When It Rains. The agediverse audience reflected the band’s continuing crossgenerational appeal: Garbage’s influence is felt in the music of Wolf Alice, Lana Del Rey and Olivia Rodrigo.
Wembley Arena is an unforgiving venue, a charmless barn that any act would struggle to conquer. Manson confessed that the band had always been afraid of performing in London – despite playing well all over the world, their London shows were always “weird duds”. Saturday night was proof, should they even need it by now, that they no longer have any reason to worry.
No further performances