Do you like… the 1990s?
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[5.71]
Edward Okulicz: Shirley Manson has said one of the reasons Garbage have come back is because nobody has really stepped into the small niche they made for themselves (fashioned out of little bits of Curve, Smashing Pumpkins and The Pretenders nobody else was using), and nobody’s got a mouth like Manson or should even bother trying. That said, it’s hard to imagine any band of the last 10 years was particularly interested in sounding like “Shut Your Mouth,” easily the least of their singles. But despite that similarity, and how apparently forthright frontwoman Manson seems anonymous and barely-recognisable, it actually has a modestly infectious chorus this time. And the “whoa” bits are ever so slightly redolent of “Self Control,” which forgives far bigger sins than this song commits.
[7]
Alfred Soto: At their best Garbage were expert synthesists; Version 2.0 still sounds like the Parallel Lines of the nineties. But he who lives for junk dies for junk. Like Blondie after 1980, post-peak Garbage galumphed from album to album in search of the audiovisual context in which they’d thrived. This isn’t bad — they can still cough up distorto-riffs that could scare Wild Flag senseless. But “not bad” is all we can hope for. “Not bad” gave us “Why Do You Love Me.”
[4]
Anthony Easton: I miss female empowerment 90s. Along with the brilliant PJ album last year, this above average Garbage single gives me hope that Courtney will stop cavorting with the wealthy and the english, maybe just maybe we can get a great album again.
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: Garbage are one of my major blind spots. Even at their height, when I loved pretty much anything on pop radio, I never heard anything in them but trendiness papering over a complete lack of ideas. Not that I ever identified with the industrial music they were supposedly desecrating, but I prefer my dance-pop less self-satisfied and moody. “Blood for Poppies” sounds exactly like I expected it to, and doesn’t do anything to alter my perception.
[4]
Brad Shoup: The verses are the rappingest — similar to Kaiser Chiefs’ “Oh My God,” actually, but the Kaisers had a brill-dumb chorus, and Garbage goes for the major key. Makes the song seem like a formalist exercise in pedalpunching.
[4]
Iain Mew: The guitar avalanches and and Shirley Manson, at least when she cuts loose, both sound as good as ever. The song doesn’t do enough with them though and comes with a sense that it would have been of the moment if it had been released straight after the last album. The running-on-the-spot verses practically sound like Kaiser Chiefs.
[5]
Michaela Drapes: In the early aughts Garbage really did lose the plot: vapid electronic bits and fussy overproduction, not enough crisp beats (the band always sounds best when functioning as one giant cantankerous rhythm section). From the first second “Blood for Poppies” kicks in, it’s clear that it’s back in business. Shirley’s fever-dream poetry lyrics are in fine form, too. Does it matter that this song is sort of kind of about the opium trade, or something? No — the words sound luscious when strung together, hard and glittering, like diamonds in a forest fire.
[8]