when_i_go_deaf | Albums In The Day: The Records Of My Life

Garbage - Garbage (1995)

The first time I heard about Garbage was when somebody in the hallway was singing the lyrics to "Queer", which made me stop and ask just what the heck they were singing. Slowly but surely local news shows started profiling "the band from Madison with a hit called 'Queer'", and here I had yet to actually hear the track nor had an idea of who these guys really were. Eventually I went to the head shop in my hometown since it was the only place that dared carry any good music (the only other option was Wal-Mart) and asked the guy that ran the place if I could check out Garbage's CD. He popped it in, the opening snare hits of "Supervixen" came over the headphones, and initially I thought, "hm, decent beat, decent guitar riffs..." until Shirley Manson's voice first graced my eardrums. I was pretty much whipped from that point forward. I tried not to loiter at the store for too long, but I ended up standing there at the listening station for a good 30 minutes tracking through the rest of the album. Listening to Shirley's voice slink it's way over and through the dark and angular grooves that Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker laid out for her was too intriguing to turn away from. I bought the album right then and there, and almost wore out the CD listening to "Only Happy When It Rains", "A Stroke Of Luck", "Stupid Girl", "Vow", "Fix Me Now", and "Milk" over and over again. It's fortunate that Marker just happened to be watching 120 Minutes the one time that the video for Shirley's previous band Angelfish had aired in 1994, otherwise we would have never known what a seductively brilliant Scottish woman and three Madison, WI-based producers would have been capable of.

Give It A Try:
"Queer"
"Only Happy When It Rains"
"Stupid Girl"
"Vow"
"Milk"