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Trash aesthetic >> Garbage: Scots vs Yanks, girls vs boys and Shirley vs Marilyn by CHRIS YURKIW
"Shirley Manson," I said. It was an honest mistake: cigarette-cherry hair, kindergarten-paste complexion, a spindly frame and some kinda screwy sexuality in your face. That crazy glam guy! As it happens, Shirley Manson and the techno-pop group she fronts, Garbage, did release their own album earlier this year-some three years after their self-titled debut took off and kept running with singles like "Queer," "Vow," "Stupid Girl" and Shirley's theme song, "Only Happy When It Rains." She's Scottish, you see. But three years?! Isn't that the kind of lag time 'tween albums that only superstars get? Maybe a decade ago. And anyway, after four million international units moved and Grammy nominations and the like, Garbage are superstars now. Modest ones, at least. How about this: ordinary superstars! I mean, how big can you get when you call yourselves Garbage? Of course, the name is probably just the other three members' self-deprecating, indie-rock roots showing. Take Steve Marker, for example. Understated, subdued, measured-he's no angry young man, but he learned his indie lessons well, alongside ol' University of Wisconsin buddy and famed Nevermind producer Butch Vig. The pair, along with third and final Garbageman Duke Erikson, have been producers, musicians and Green Bay Packer fans together since the original daze of punk-as it filtered into the American Midwest. Vig, of course, eventually became as much of a household name as any producer can become, but the boys must've certainly given up any hope of being pop stars when they started Garbage and were pushing 40? Steve? [Laughs] "I don't know if that was ever the main goal. It was more like just to have this outlet to try out a lot of these strange ideas that we'd had floating around for quite a while-that we hadn't been able to use because we were producing other people. It wasn't to be a pop star. Shirley's a pop star." Ah! And this wasn't a cold and hard plan to storm the charts: take an uppity Scot frontwoman, who was floundering in something called Angelfish, and stick her and her viscous, vengeful lyrics on top of three Americans who were last seen doing high-powered remixes for U2 and Nine Inch Nails? Apparently not. "Shirley's definitely a lot like [her image]," says Steve. "Obviously that's not the complete picture, but the sexy supervixen pop-star thing is not something she makes up. She's actually a frighteningly intelligent person-very opinionated and strong. High strung. Temperamental... We're all good friends now." The new album, Version 2.0, is not as stunningly popwise as the first but has its moments. Like the first single "Push It," which pimped a lyrical and melodic line from the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" to the point that the band went to meet Brian Wilson to get his blessing. Or "Special," Garbage at their hooky, barbed best. There might not be a ton of Grammy material this time, but Marker can't even remember the three categories the group was nominated for in 1997. "Hmm... maybe Best Rock Song or something?" he gropes cooly. "And Best New Artist, and something else. The worst thing was that we got beat by Leann Rimes for Best New Artist. If it was somebody cool that would have been OK, but a 12-year-old country singer?" I console Marker by reminding him that disco one-hit wonders A Taste of Honey won the infamous Best New Artist Grammy in 1978. "Yeah, I call it the Milli Vanilli Award," he says. "Who else ever won that? Christopher Cross?!" I dunno. Marilyn Manson? With Girls Against Boys at Metropolis next Thursday, November 5. Also: MusiquePlus's "Artiste du mois" Garbage perform live on the air Friday, November 6 at 7pm
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"What's that on the cover of the new Marilyn Manson album?" someone asked.