Remember 10 years ago? Vaguely? Well that’s when Garbage released their first album; a fresh look at grunge with hard yet catchy guitar riffs, a new- wave production sound and a female singer with a voice both intense and seductive. Their sound hasn’t changed much since then. Bleed Like Me, Garbage’s fourth album, may very well mark a creative dead end for the band.
With the recent parade of female poppers craving to be rockers (no need to mention names here), livid female lead singers have moved from being novel to being a joke. It would seem like a good time for an experienced rock vocalist like Shirley Manson to step in and stop this, but all she does is give us a self-pitying cry of pain. In the title track “Bleed Like Me,” the words “You should see my scars” ring in the background; it’s enough to leave listeners with scars of their own.
Manson is still passionate and forceful, but her overly depressing lyrics are not. In “Sex Is Not the Enemy,” Manson dives deep singing “True love is like gold/ There’s not enough to go around.”
The guitar riffs can’t save this as they are bland to the point where many tracks, especially the last few, blur together. “Run Baby Run” provides the lone exception; an experiment in the new- wave sound that would make anyone want to pop in some New Order. Maybe Garbage should have embraced this a little more, instead of trying to be so angry all the time.
