Album review: Garbage – Let All That We Imagine Be The Light

Releasing this eighth album almost 30 years after their debut, Garbage are a band with nothing left to prove. Nothing, that is, beyond their continued relevance. Even that’s not in much doubt – their last album, 2021’s No Gods No Masters, was the best thing this sleek, tunefully menacing outfit had released since at least their revered 1998 second album, Version 2.0.

Without shouting about it, Garbage’s influence has rained down – Download debutants Dead Pony and Holy Wars are just two disparate outfits that surely wouldn’t exist in quite the same way without Shirley Manson’s steel-eyed purr or Butch Vig’s electronic-fused sound assemblies. The latter is something the fabled producer and drummer seems to have saved for his own outfit. While Let All That We Imagine Be The Light can’t match its predecessor’s scope, it further confirms Garbage’s currency. It’s an album that thrives on head-opening sounds while responding via its singer to shuffling personal and societal problems.

Recorded in the wake of Shirley’s lengthy and painful recovery from a hip replacement operation, it’s also a set that looks for hope. She documents her tramadol-laced comeback in unflinching manner on The Day That I Met God, while the massively contoured, beautifully melodic Love To Give offers the bursts of optimism she struggled to find during that phase.

As always, Garbage cannot resist lashing out at the madness of a society that has placed borderline pyschopaths in control of superpowers. Beguiling opener There’s No Future In Optimism captures a sense of chaotic disbelief, while R U Happy Now bemoans the Trump administration’s blindly selfish suppression of truths. ‘Make no mistake friend, they hate your women; they rob your children and they love their guns,’ Shirley mourns.

While not quite the box of delights Garbage shook at us last time, there’s persistent allure in the mating of cavernous soundscapes with Shirley’s penetratingly icy vocals. It’s more than enough to keep this most distinctive of outfits in the alt.rock fast lane.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Starset, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails

Let All That We Imagine Be The Light is out now via BMG

Read this: Garbage: “I can either be completely destroyed by what’s going on, or I can engage with action, love and kindness”