Garbage - Battle In Me

We’re going to go and say it, Battle In Me sounds even better than Blood For Poppies. If the latter was the appetiser for Garbage’s long awaited new album, then Battle In Me is the fully fledged starter course, with a heap-load of trimmings. It roughens up the Garbage formula with icy guitar lines and those glitchy electronics – in a way, it’s like they’ve never really been away. There’s something timeless to Battle In Me that feels like the glory days of the band re-cast all over again. As always, the overall production quality is absolutely top-notch – everything colluding nicely into a slipstream of sonic pleasure; in this instance a racey, punked-up tour-de-force that hits with the heft of a boxer and the precision of a trained sniper. It might not be the cleverest or most adventurous Garbage track, but in terms of un-fettered enjoyment and ‘Thank God they’re back!’ factor, Battle In Me hits all the right buttons.

Battle In Me is released on the 7^th May.

Garbage - Blood For Poppies

With Garbage, you can always count on two things - Shirley Manson doing her amped-up power-woman thing, and tracks that even when not the most consistent in quality, assured of a sort of intelligent vitality. And new single Blood For Poppies is in many ways the very definition of all that - a punky, agile number that for all the world ends up sounding like Hard-Fi.

Blood For Poppies chief merits are that it's far more (appropriately) poppy and more clinical than most of Bleed Like Me was. While Manson's vocals might be invested with a cool new brattiness and the production has been given a smart lick of paint and gloss, the song is firmly rooted in the Garbage we all fell in love with back in the 90s.

Sure, it's no Stupid Girl, but then the band's return - after more than half a decade - was never going to be like that. Like every band of their generation, there's the need and capacity to adapt, to bring in new influences and new sounds. And in Blood For Poppies, Garbage bring in a smattering of both worlds; the old and the new melded together with the union they were always so skilled at crafting. As far as 'comeback' singles go, Blood For Poppies might be more perky surprise than it is essential, but it sure feels good to listen to. And it's that ideal of auditory enjoyment which has always lain at the heart of the Garbage aesthetic.