Louder AAA
It’s been a tumultuous time for Garbage recently, with frontwoman Shirley Manson undergoing hospitalisation and intense media scrutiny. But the band’s most recent two albums are rated as their best work since the 90s, and live, they’re at the very top of their game.
Of your 2025 latest album, Classic Rock said: “Garbage are still in their prime, as relevant as ever. Let All That We Imagine Be The Light is one of their most reflective yet defiant.” Fair?
I think we’ve always been defiant. I consider the last album as a companion piece to the previous one [2021’s No Gods No Masters], which I think is by far the most defiant thing we’ve done. Both those albums have been lauded as Garbage’s best work since the nineties.
But hasn’t the band’s sound evolved significantly during the interim, meaning the two eras are incomparable?
As a child who grew up with an academic father who literally marked everything out of ten – even the Christmas dinner I provide for the family every year – I never mark anything out of ten. I don’t believe in the best or worst, I see our career as an entirety. I’d be disappointed in myself if our music sounded exactly the same thirty years later. But I appreciate when people say: “This is a really great record.” I think what people mean when they say: “This is the best record this band has made in a long time” is that they feel the same kind of energy. Sometimes you get lucky and you capture an energy, and people respond. It’s a wonderful thing.
The Let All We That Imagine… track Chinese Fire Horse (inspired by your Chinese zodiac sign) was a response to people asking you about retirement. Apparently those with the fire horse sign are “known for their unstoppable drive”. That’s definitely you, right?
That’s definitely me! Ha ha ha!
But you’ve demonstrated that drive – possibly at the expense of your own health. In the nineties you went on tour post-op. You tried to perform with a vocal cord injury. You carried on when, in 2016, you fell off stage and injured your hip…
My family refers to the same thing. My sister described me and my dad as “the unstoppable force meets the immovable object”. I was the unstoppable force and my dad was the immovable object. When I started reading up on the fire horse, I found it amusing. It’s portrayed in heroic terms – I’m far from that, but I identified with some of the traits. But in the song I was talking about ageism. It wasn’t just journalists asking me when I was going to retire [Manson is 59], but family members too. It’s tiresome. I was just really getting fed up of it. The lyrics are very tongue-in-cheek but also very true: I’ll be done when I say I’m done.
You were hospitalised in 2024 for major surgery, and prescribed heavy-duty opioids for pain management. Is that what inspired the song The Day I Met God?
Yeah, well it’s not every day that I meet God, as you can imagine. But I did meet God when I was high on opioids! It was a spectacular moment of realisation. Because I’m not an organised believer. I don’t fall in line with any organised religion. I am very sceptical when people talk about God, because I’ve never known what God is. Except when I was really down.
I had just lost my soul dog, I had two hip replacements, my dad was dying. I was the lowest I have ever been in my life. And I’m a pretty ebullient character. It sounds so pretentious – and it is – but in this very brief interlude, I realised that, for me, God was everybody that I had ever loved, everyone that I would ever love, and everyone that I currently love. That to me was God. It was all about the cliché of love.
God is love?
Yeah, God is love. My father was really religious and I heard that phrase “God is love” my whole life. And I just thought it was a load of fucking bollocks. And then in this moment of real desperation, I was really having to dig deep into myself, I was like: “Oh, I get it.”
Following that overblown incident in December when the press criticised you for chastising a fan with a beach ball during a festival appearance in Melbourne, you explained you were grieving your dad. But was something else going on too?
Like all stories, you never get the full picture. I am taking full responsibility for my poor behaviour. I totally cracked. Literally a week previous to that event, I’d buried my father – who I was very close to. It’s been very difficult and it remains to be. But I take full responsibility for the fact that I was an idiot and rose to the bait, and then I had to live with the repercussions of that. But please don’t think I’m going: “Oh, poor me.”
Garbage are playing at Edinburgh Castle on July 11, and you’ve said it might be the band’s last ever headline gig in Scotland.
Well, these are complicated times for all bands. We are not a young band where everybody is super-excited about us, so we don’t have that advantage. We’ve had to make a lot of very hard fiscal decisions. And also, we’re old, for fuck’s sake!
Not that old! And everyone in Garbage seems younger than they are. Butch Vig plays the drums like he’s in his twenties!
Ha ha! But we are! And we can’t keep doing this forever. Our generation are now falling like flies. We are the last of our kind. We’re not saying this is the last time we’ll ever play live or anything like that. But are we going to get to come back to Edinburgh or Scotland any time soon? Probably not. We’re gonna make another record, we know that much.
If the last two albums were companion pieces, why not make it a trilogy?
No, I think the next record will be quite different. We’ll see. Who knows? We are planning on doing another record, but touring is just getting more and more difficult. Maybe we’ll couple up with another band.
Talking of which, you’re also doing a six-date tour with Skunk Anansie, alternating each night as headliners. Are you a big fan of them?
Absolutely. And I hold Skin in the highest regard. It’s been difficult for me at times in the music industry as a woman, but being a Black woman is a hundred per cent more challenging. So the fact that she has thrived is magnificent. It’s a glorious story for all young Black kids in Britain to realise that they too can succeed despite some of the repulsiveness that exists.
You and Skin could do an amazing collab.
Yeah, we’ve talked about it, but it’s not come to anything just yet. But we’re peers – we grew through the nineties together. The music press at the time tried to pit both bands against each other – you know: “Who’s sexier, Skin or Shirl?” All that bollocks. The fact is both bands love each other. There was never any beef between us.
How was your recent Teenage Cancer Trust show at the Royal Albert Hall?
It was glorious, a joy from start to finish. Just to be asked. When I got the email from [TCT shows curator] Robert Smith, I was like: “Holy fuck!” My husband said: “Well, that’s your Grammy.” I was like: “It’s better than a fucking Grammy!” And it’s such an amazing charity, to help young people push up against a really scary disease. It’s incredibly well run by lovely people.
Garbage’s tour with Skunk Anansie begins on June 16. For dates and tickets, check the Garbage website.
