On The Road Again: Garbage "Not Your Kind Of People (Japan, Sony Records Intl., SICP-3478)"

viernes, 14 de junio de 2024

Garbage "Not Your Kind Of People (Japan, Sony Records Intl., SICP-3478)"

Not Your Kind of People is the fifth studio album by American rock band Garbage. It was released on May 11, 2012, through the band's own record label, Stunvolume. The album marks the return of the band after a seven-year hiatus that started with previous album Bleed Like Me. Guitarist Duke Erikson said at the launch of the record that "working with Garbage again was very instinctual. Like getting on a bicycle...with three other people." The band emphasized that they did not want to reinvent themselves, but embrace their sonic identity, reflecting their classic sound whilst updating it for 2012. Although Shirley Manson's morose dispositions have a presence on the record, many of the songs share a more optimistic outlook on life, influenced by some of Manson's personal experiences during their hiatus.

Recorded mostly at various recording studios in California, Not Your Kind of People was produced by Garbage, and was engineered and mixed by Billy Bush. The album contains bass guitar parts recorded by Justin Meldal-Johnsen while Finnish actress Irina Björklund performs the musical saw on one track. Both daughters of band-members Steve Marker and Butch Vig laid down vocals on the album's title track. Photos for the album package were shot by Autumn de Wilde at the Paramour Mansion in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

Not Your Kind of People was preceded by the release of "Blood for Poppies" as the lead single internationally, while in the United Kingdom, "Battle in Me" was marketed as the album's lead single. The album also spawned three more singles, "Automatic Systematic Habit", "Big Bright World", and "Control". Not Your Kind of People received a generally positive reception from critics. It debuted at number 17 on the Billboard 200, at number 10 on the UK Albums Chart, peaked at number three on Billboard's Independent Albums chart and topped the Alternative Albums chart.

Garbage decided to take a hiatus in 2005, following the troubled production of their fourth studio album Bleed Like Me and cutting short the album's promotional tour. Aside from a reunion in 2007 to compose new tracks for the compilation Absolute Garbage, the band members found themselves involved in various projects, with Butch Vig producing Green Day, Foo Fighters, and Muse, while singer Shirley Manson recorded an unreleased solo album and made her professional acting debut as a series regular on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

In 2009, Vig and Manson met at the funeral of Pablo Castelaz, the six-year-old son of Dangerbird Records founder Jeff Castelaz, and had a conversation where, according to Vig, "we felt like we had some unfinished business, and we realized how precious life is and how important music has been in our lives." Manson suggested calling guitarists Duke Erikson and Steve Marker to get together and write some songs. One week later, the group informally convened in Los Angeles, where they laughed, drank, and reminisced of the old days, leaving behind the tensions among them and general weariness that was partly responsible for their 2005 breakup; they set up their equipment and "started fucking around". "We were all pleased to notice on the first day there just didn't seem to be any personal tensions," Vig recalled. "Enough time had passed that any sort of weirdness or tension that had risen between us all had dissipated. So it was easy. There was no one telling us what to do. We weren't signed to a label. We were between managers. So we made this on our own terms." In that session, the group wrote the song "Battle In Me".

In mid-2010, the entire group were in Los Angeles for a birthday, where Manson suggested they book a studio and spend time writing. Along with Garbage's long time engineer and Manson's husband Billy Bush, the band, as Bush described, "hung out for a couple weeks, drank some wine and played a bunch of music”. Three or four song ideas came together during this time. "But we didn't go right into making-a-record mode", Erikson recalled. "It took a bit of time for us to realize that we were going to make an album." Erikson described reconvening as a piecemeal process, saying that it informally began with the first phone conversations among them since their hiatus, as they discussed playing together again. After convening, and composing and performing song ideas together through multiple sessions, they then decided to move forward with the band and embark on a full-length album. The project took off in February 2011, when Manson called Vig proposing to reunite the band and try making a new record. Manson convoked the group out of an eagerness "to make loud music again". "I'm a loud person", she proclaimed; "I love noise and aggression. I crave contact. I needed to make that connection again. I think we all did. To get something back up when there was absolutely no momentum took a Herculean effort on everybody's part. It's like pulling yourself out of mud. Even to stand back up and say 'we're going to take another swing at this' was a scary feeling, and I'm proud of us for trying. It's much easier to stay at home.”

The band members stated that following the troublesome final years signed to Geffen Records, being an independent act again helped improve their mood and approach, with Vig remarking, "There were no expectations; no one even knew we were recording. So it was all under the radar and pretty casual and we all felt inspired after having that amount of time off ... when we started writing songs, they came fast and furious. We probably wrote 24, 25 songs over the course of a couple of months. Marker commented that "the business stuff ends up taking over some of that fun. We got really bogged down in people's expectations of what we were supposed to be doing, being on bigger record labels and stuff. With all that behind us, it was suddenly exciting again and it felt a lot like it did when we first formed, which was really just sort of a fun idea that we had." Manson added, "People at record companies live in fear of being wrong. Music cannot thrive in that environment. It is an unruly art form. You can't keep treating it like sausage meat. You have to let it morph and move and breathe."

Manson stated that eliminating the corporate pressure and indifference, as well as the band having a relaxed approach to the making of the record was pivotal for a healthy regroup, writing and recording process. "We didn't put any pressure on ourselves to finish an album... We just took our time and got together in two-week blocks of time – any longer than that I'm sure we would have started getting on each others' nerves. So we did two weeks and then we'd take some time off and then when everybody felt ready we'd get back in [the studio] again. As a result, I think everybody really enjoyed our time together and really plugged in", she remarked. Never much enjoying being in a studio, Manson relished the record-making process this time around.

Unlike the previous albums, which were done at Vig's Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, Not Your Kind of People was mostly recorded in Los Angeles, where both Vig and Manson live. Smart was only used for some of Erikson's parts, as he was the only bandmember still in Wisconsin. The working process was also different; while the previous records had the band gathering for an entire year at Smart Studios, the band would instead work two weeks per month in Los Angeles, with Erikson and Marker flying in from Wisconsin and Colorado, respectively, then spend another two weeks in their home studios while e-mailing ideas back and forth to develop songs. Manson would also visit Vig's GrungeIsDead studio to experiment with vocals. Then they would get back together in the studio, which according to Marker "would be fun again because we hadn't seen these people for a couple of weeks."

The first recordings were done in two weeks of jam sessions at The Pass in Studio City. The band then moved to Bush's studio Red Razor Sounds at Atwater Village, where the engineer did a rough mix of the tracks. Vig declared that the album's mood emerged from the combination of the "trashy and lo-tech" studio which he compared to a small clubhouse with the band's ProTools and samplers. The band had a looser approach to recording and mixing compared to the "nano-editing" of Version 2.0.

The band worked on estimatedly "25 or 26 songs" during the album sessions; While a few were still "bits and pieces", Vig stated they might finish them as further bonus tracks, B-sides, or as part of an EP at a later point. Erikson said that the bonus tracks of the deluxe edition are songs that were not ready in time to join the regular track list. He also said that while most songs were new compositions, some were old ideas, such as the "10 years old or something" track "Show Me". Throughout the recording sessions for the album, the band mentioned several song titles via Facebook and Twitter; these included: "Alone", "Animal", "Choose Your Weapon", "Time Will Destroy Everything" and "T.R.O.U.B.L.E.". Manson confirmed on Twitter that "Animal" became "The One", a song from the deluxe version, while "Time Will Destroy Everything" was released as the b-side to the band's 2014 Record Store Day single, "Girls Talk".

A post on Garbage's Facebook page on January 23, 2012 announced that the band launched their own record label, Stunvolume, to self-release their new studio album, distributed in the United States by Fontana. Overseas distribution deals were made with Cooperative Music, Liberator Music, Sony Music Japan and Universal Canada. On March 7, 2012, Garbage confirmed the album track listing via YouTube. Four further tracks recorded for the deluxe edition were confirmed later in a press release issued through the band's own label. In the United Kingdom, 250 copies of the deluxe edition were signed by Garbage and issued as part of the Record Store Day campaign. The album had a worldwide release date of May 14, 2012. At the launch of the record, guitarist Duke Erikson said that "working with Garbage again was very instinctual. Like getting on a bicycle... with three other people"; Erikson added, "We haven't felt this good about a Garbage record since the last one." Los Angeles-based studio SMOG Design handled the album's artwork and creative campaign, featuring band photographs by Autumn de Wilde. According to Duke Erikson, for the cover "there was some art that we wanted to do but we didn't want to spend what the artist wanted us to", so instead of "a very colorful and complex cover" they opted to go the other way and be simplistic, with only a lowercase "g".

In the United States, Not Your Kind of People was released exclusively through iTunes during its first week, and debuted at number 17 on the Billboard 200 with 19,000 digital copies sold in its first week. In its second week, the album rose to number 13 with sales of over 22,000 copies. As of June 2016, the album has sold 98,000 copies in the US. In the United Kingdom, it became the band's fifth top-10 studio album when it entered the UK Albums Chart at number 10 with first-week sales of 8,310 copies. The album also debuted at number 33 on the Japanese Oricon chart, selling 1,983 copies.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Garbage