Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

#MusicMonday: “Blood for Poppies” – Garbage

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I love music. I have so many favorite artists that it would take a month to highlight them all, and my “five-star songs” list in iTunes can play for days without a repeat.

There is one artist that eclipses them all: Garbage.

I have never been able to explain it. Garbage flies in the face of a lot of my specific musical preferences. They don’t have the best lyrics. They are not the most creative songwriters. Shirley Manson is not always a technically strong singer. They often let sophisticated production obscure the human performances that make a song.

I don’t care. I never have. There is something about their formula – Shirley Manson plus Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker – that forms the most compelling possible music for me.

That means it is a very, very big deal when they debut their first single after a nearly seven-year hiatus, interrupted by the release of just a few scant b-sides.


(Hurry up and download “Blood for Poppies” for free directly from Garbage while it is still available!)

There are many familiar facets about this song. The throbbing, undifferentiated layers of guitars and drums topped with a crisp, chiming electric. The obnoxiously fuzzy riff that at once underpins and interrupts the phrases. Shirley’s sultry, half-spoken unspooling of lyrics. An unusual bridge that interrupts and deconstructs the song, yet perfectly returns us to exactly the point where it began.

Then there is the chorus. Layered vocals as far as the ear can hear, and army of Shirley Manson in perfect, major-key harmony, obscuring all but the most rudimentary rhythms beneath her.

I love it. It screams that Garbage is still Garbage, sounding somehow the same but different. Yet, it builds that from a stingily small handful of elements that are nearly recursive, all easily referenced to past exploits. Shirley sounds fierce and comfortable, a combination of her bombshell 00s vocals and her signature 90s wratch. Yet, the lyrics are stitched-together and nearly-rapped, less of the band’s tainted love hallmark and more of catchy outliers like “When I Grow Up” or “Shut Your Mouth.”

Do the detraction mean I’ve stopped pounding this track on repeat for the past week? No. Even the worst Garbage song (which this is nowhere near) is still a song that infects my brain in a neuron-by-neuron guerrilla campaign.

Will this be the sound of Not Your Kind of People? Probably not. No single Garbage song ever communicates the full arsenal of its album – especially not the lead single. Was the dark, surging, vengeful “Vow” the most representative track of Garbage? Was the pastiche of riffs and whispered howl of “Push It” a better sample of Version 2.0 than “I Think I’m Paranoid” or “Special”? Did the gender-bending stomp of “Androgyny” adequately explain the sour pop spectacular of Beautiful Garbage? And, did the Sabbath-esque riff and sparse verses of “Why Do You Love Me” explain the stripped down, real-band sound of Bleed Like Me?

I guess that’s just one more way that Garbage stands apart from all of the other bands I love. While I struggle to dissect and define their music, with Garbage all that is an afterthought. I have an inherent trust of Garbage that no other artist I love can engender. I can’t help but dissect their songs, but for once it is beside the point. It’s not why I’m listening.

I’m listening because, over fifteen years after I first listen to the full length of their debut, they are still my favorite band on the planet.

Not Your Kind of People is out on May 15 in standard and deluxe versions (deluxe includes extra songs, and Garbage are known for the awesomeness of their B-Sides).

Are the bears sleeping comfortably?

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I know all too well the February Funk I typically descend into each year.

You might not know it too well, because it involves me becoming a total shut-in for the entire month, totally cutting off all ties with the outside world – including blog ties. It is a special, wintry listlessness that let’s no ambition escape its grasp. The only thing that will sate it is missed rehearsals and hours of playing video games. It may cause me to  wear sweat pants for non-sweaty activities. It’s altogether terrifying.

This year I skipped it entirely.

Unlike an extra layer of blankets, you cannot kick of your accumulated fat when it gets too warm at night.

I’m still not sure how I accomplished that. Maybe it was the weather? Philly never endured any bitter cold this February and we skipped our seemingly-annual snowpocalypse. On the whole it was uncannily springlike. I wonder if hibernating animals were all terribly disoriented by it. Like, were all the bears all rolling around in their sleep, thinking, “I am too damned hot in all these layers of fat”?

Who knows?

Whatever the reason, the only funk to be found this February was from the awesome music I’ve been playing.

Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve never played a lick of funk music in my life, unless you count screaming James Brown back and forth with Gina between songs at rehearsal. GET ON THE GOOD FOOT.

The real way I stayed happy and healthy for the month was by vastly, vastly overcommitting – but, in a way that didn’t put the whole burden on my shoulders. That path leads to Funk. We doubled Arcati Crisis rehearsals. I began editing my book in earnest for Writer’s Club. I started a sort of tentative search committee around forming a new cover band, which I haven’t even talked about yet, along with other insane undiscussed developments – joining the board of a local org, editing a new blog, mixing two EPs for bands I love, planning to play and iPod DJ a wedding – the list goes on.

One thing all the activity has in common? No isolation. Even book editing has the end result of being in a room with other people, talking.

It worked! I made it through February alive and decidely unfunky. Suddenly, it is March and I’m free, free from the stultifying confines of the dastardly February Funk!

And I am booked every day and night for the next four weeks. Some days I don’t have enough time allotted for dinner or the possibility of needing to use the bathroom.

Hey, if that’s what it takes to skip February Funk, count me in. I’ll take March Mayhem, as long as it doesn’t lead to April Admittance-to-Hospital-due-to-Exhaustion.