Garbage, Edinburgh review: 'Shirley Manson brought emotional clout'

With drummer Butch Vig confirming that Garbage’s “dysfunctional family” have nearly finished their eighth album, this was a show that consolidated the electronic alt-rock outfit’s reputation for techno sheen over distorted guitars. Their shimmering, still-futuristic gloss and poppier songwriting inclinations are offset by grim and grungier sensibilities, with impassioned frontwoman Shirley Manson plaintively despairing at the state of the world while also expressing delight at being back in her hometown of Edinburgh. Dedicating the aggressive but melodically lush Special to her ailing father and a sister celebrating a birthday, Manson still clearly loves Scotland and the crowd responded with mutual admiration.

The band opened with the patented synth churn and disturbing lyricism of #1 Crush. Its underlying menace was carried into the verses of I Think I’m Paranoid, which then expanded into a breakdown of sonic squall.

There’s a chug to the guitars and an overarching sameness to Garbage’s wall of sound that becomes a little suffocating over the course of an entire show. Yet Manson brings emotive fierceness and emotional clout to the clinical sound of her uniformly black-clad bandmates. Moreover, there’s no arguing with the funky bass and rock-pop perfection of Stupid Girl, dropped in mid-set shortly before the glam techno stomp of 2021’s Wolves, the vintage hooks and polish bridging more than a quarter of a century’s gap between their respective releases.

After industrialising the Siouxsie & The Banshees track Cities In Dust while just about retaining its persistent danceability, the band then stumbled a bit with the wretched When I Grow Up, which remains strikingly immediate even if its oppressive poppinness hasn’t aged well. Regardless, an encore of Manson’s most ethereal vocals on Milk and the sparkling Only Happy When It Rains closed the show on a defiantly chippy note.