Garbage (Self Titled)

Early in my teen years, I received my first CD player. I remember the first CDs I owned. They were gifts that my grandmother bought me when she bought me the portable CD player. It was Volume 10 of MTV’s “Party To Go” series and “The Score” by the Fugees.

Soon thereafter, I got a stereo with a multi-disc changer (that was so cool at the time - you just had to be there) and I was often given music gift certificates (like gift cards, but not an actual card. They were more like gift checks, and not using the whole thing at one time was unnecessarily difficult for the clerk behind the desk…anyway) to the music store.

One of the first CDs I remember buying for myself was the debut, self-titled album from the band Garbage. The video for “Only Happy When It Rains” was very popular and I loved the song and colors in the video. The bright pink album cover helped make the cover stick in my mind as I was sifting through the sea of jewel cases on the multitude of shelves.

To echo what I said in the “Fallen” essay, these albums are in no way ranked, but also as I said in the “Fallen” essay, as I look back upon this album and feel the vibes this album gives, I absolutely should have covered this album sooner.

You put the disc in the stereo, push play, and you’re instantly hit with drums quickly counting you in and guitars going hard for the first four beats of the 8-count. What I love the most about this is that it just stops on beat 5 and plays through for beats 6 through 8. I feel like that might come across as a very technical way of explaining that, but it’s the only way I can think to spell that out. Either way, I was hooked in those two bars.

It plays through eight more beats, or two more bars with no rest, and would repeat those four bars over again before fading out into a gentle guitar and the voice of Shirley Manson, an absolutely stunning Scottish redhead that definitely caught the attention of teenage me.

“Come down to my house, stick a stone in your mouth. You can always pull out if you like it too much”

I’m not even going to pretend like I know what any of that meant at the time or if I can say that I fully understand it today, but whatever it means, it was cool to hear her sing it.

The music picks back up after this as the lyrics continue. It mellows out again and picks back up and I think that it’s this auditory roller-coaster that I love so much about “Supervixen”. It’s not my favorite track, but a fantastic example of what’s to come for the rest of the album.

“The queerest of the queer. Strangest of the strange. The coldest of the cool. The lamest of the lame”

“Queer” is a quieter song, continuing the aforementioned auditory roller-coaster started in “Supervixen” - this varying sound is the primary reason that this album falls into this category of favorite albums. In the mid-to-late 90s, the word “queer” was more often than not a homosexual slur but this song taught me the true definition of the word is just “strange”. There isn’t much to the lyrics in this song, but that keeps the vibe simple. Nothing derogatory or inflammatory - just a song where it sounds like the singer is trying to highlight a person’s true self from behind their “hard veneer” through seduction.

Actually, the more I think about it, a lot of Shirley Manson’s vocal appeal is the seductive way she sings, elongating a lot of the lyrics with her soft, breathy voice.
“Queer” really highlights this.

As much as I love “Only Happy When It Rains”, it’s the song most people know best so I feel like I should focus on the lesser-known song. I will say, however, that this song works because of the upbeat, higher tempo rock music playing against lyrics that, to me, act like a depressed teenager’s national anthem. “I only smile in the dark. My only comfort is the night gone black. I didn’t accidentally tell you that. I’m only happy when it rains.” followed by the chorus that demands you “pour some misery down on me.” - it showcases how the feeling of depression (the lyrics) envelopes one’s desire to be happy (the music).

Maybe that’s just me.

Maybe that’s all that song needed highlighting.

Moving on.

I don’t intend to go track-for-track, like I did with other albums (although I absolutely could), I am going to talk about “As Heaven Is Wide”, completing commentary on the first four tracks of the album.

If you didn’t know that Garbage was an electronic-rock or, as we would have said then, a techno-rock band, you learn it very quickly in this song. The techno beat of the song shine in this song and is, for me, the best example of the band’s “sound”.

The lyrics are very powerful, with the singer speaking to someone that has clearly hurt them deeply. This is verse one:

Nothing that you say will release you
Nothing that you pray would forgive you
Nothing's what your words mean to me
Something that you did will destroy me
Something that you said will stay with me
Long after you're dead and gone

When someone crosses a line, this is exactly how it feels. A heated argument or, God forbid, after abuse, this is the sentiment. How one instance or how after just one time something can stain your soul permanently and there’s no coming back from it - not for the abuser and sadly, not for the abused.

The lyrics depict trauma flawlessly. The pre-chorus and chorus show the relationship between the theme and the title. “If flesh could crawl, my skin would fall from off my bones and run away from here as far from God as Heaven is Wide” - a powerful metaphor for if Heaven is infinite, the width of Heaven is thus infinite meaning this is no distant from this pain that I could ever reach; the pain is eternal.

The power of the third verse saves us from the weight of this message:

Take it back, I dare you, take it back
No, you can't, you should've thought of that
What's inside a man that goes so wrong?
Choke on guilt, that's far too good for you
Say one word, I'll laugh and bury you
And leave you in the place where you left me

The entire song is just heavy with the truth of the theme of this song. The auditory roller-coaster is truly the only route of escape that we get. The pain-to-vengeance vantage point of the song pushes the coaster up the hill to the next series of songs before the weight bring the vibe and the same breathy elongating of the words is less sexy and more sadistic here. Same voice, new energy.

“A stroke of luck or a gift from God…”

Drums lightly coming behind an opening of two blended radio static sounds (that makes sense when you hear it), we reach “A Stroke of Luck”. Just drums and what is likely a keyboard or synthesizer accompany Shirley through verse one. As the guitar comes in with the chorus, it plays like a smooth, low-key guitar solo - it’s almost like a background guitar was put upfront, meaning that the guitar is very present and intentional, but isn’t trying to stand out. It gives this song a lulling vibe that you can just chill with or subtly rock with.

Lyrically, this song is Shirley sharing her complicated mind, which sounds like a mind post-trauma. Shirley is telling someone that she was lost until they found her, but for her own reasons, she can’t tell if being found by them was “a stroke of luck or a gift from God; Hand of fate or Devil’s claws”. Later, the lyrics say that our someone said “…that you’ll be there to catch me” and is then questioned “or will you only try to trap me?” to then be informed “These are the rules I make. Our chains were meant to break, you’ll never change me.”

I relate to this far more than I’m comfortable admitting to myself. No matter what I’m told, I fear there is something nefarious just beneath the surface to such a degree that I risk self-sabatoging relationships, personal, professional, romantic, or otherwise.

A lot of people I know can relate to this.

This is the album with “Stupid Girl”, another popular single that was released and occupied MTV heavily at the time. Other songs on the albums, like “Dog New Tricks” and “Fix Me Now” are notable stops on this auditory roller-coaster but the ride stops with “Milk”.

I’m not sure how, exactly, but “Milk” sounds like what I’d suspect it feels like to wade in a bathtub full of milk. If that makes no sense to you, that’s okay - that doesn’t make sense to me either, but I still stand by my description.

The song is bleak, but not quite sad. It surrounds you like the chain at the end of our roller-coaster, aiding us to a soft and gentle stop. It coats your soul like I would imagine milk would if it could.

Overall, this album is an instant jolt of nostalgia whenever I hear songs from it and the completed ride from “Supervixen” to “Milk” is a rivaled by very few. My suggestion is to take a day, sit or lay down, and play the entire album. It think you’ll see what I’m talking about and why, of course, it’s one of my favorite albums.