Garbage                                                                                                       Not Your Kind of People                                                                      Stunvolume, 2012

After 7 years, Garbage returns and they sound as though they’ve regained their footing on what made them sound like, uhm, Garbage. 

It’s a melancholy pop album that recalls the best bits which made the band a staple of late 90’s alt radio. Exceptional production quality was one of the bands trademarks and is evident throughout.  

Opening number “Automatic System Habit,” is full of bluster and angst, but seems to be a method acting approach to rediscovering who they are musically. Still it’s fun to hear Shirley Manson sing, “Not for you, not for me, not for your other lover/ I won’t be your dirty little secret.”

Immediately followed by “Big Bright World,” is hopeful, upbeat and instantly likable. It sounds like something U2 might have written before Bono started hanging out at the UN all the time.   

But it’s on “Blood for Poppies,” that Garbage really begins to channel 1997 believably, with confidence and attitude. Alternately light and dark in the now standard Pixies approach to radio friendly song-craft, it has the right amount of crunchy guitars and swirling synths to color the gloom Manson channels so well.

The title track provides a brooding nursery rhyme feel you’d find in horror films with creepy little kids. “We are not your kind of people/We find when you start talking/There’s nothing but white noise.” It supposed to make you feel slightly uneasy despite its sugary delivery.

“I Hate Love” and “Man on a Wire” are other stand out tracks here. Both are driven, the former easily and sweetly aggressive, the latter all in overdrive.

Garbage cover a lot ground here, and much of it will sound familiar. But far from simply repeating themselves, they’ve managed to harness their sultry and afflicted appeal into a new found emotional turmoil.