CD Odyssey Disc 1504: Garbage

This next record was long, but through the combination of a few lunch-time runs, and being stuck in heavy traffic on my drive home, I was able to get in a couple of solid listens. So…here we are.

Disc 1504 is….  No Gods No Masters

Artist: Garbage

Year of Release: 2021

What’s up with the Cover? An art photograph taken by Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson. Here we have an angel, looking a bit portly around the middle. I am not judging. As a middle-aged man I wage a constant war against my expanding middle. I can’t even imagine how hard it is to stay trim over several millennia.

How I Came To Know It: I have a couple of Garbage albums dating from the mid-nineties and early oughts but I haven’t exactly been a loyal fan for the intervening twenty years or so. For whatever reason this latest record caught my attention.

How It Stacks Up: I now have three Garbage albums. Of the three, I put “No Gods No Masters” in at #3.

Ratings: 2 stars but almost 3

Would I have been more favourably disposed to “No Gods No Masters” it if had come out in 2001 instead of 2021? Probably, yes, but it didn’t, and so here we are.

First of all, this record is loud. Loud in that early-oughts kind of way where it felt like the guy in the sound booth said “fuck it,” pushed all the dials north, and hoped for the best. I think it is going for that thumping rave/club sound, but when you turn everything up at once you take away any nuance the songs may possess.

A good example is “Uncomfortably Me” which has all the bones of a great song, but where the emotional content gets battered out of it. It is like going to a show where they’ve overamped the room and the sound is bouncing off the walls at you like a fusillade of concussion grenades. There is a lot of good in this song, but they needed to let it breathe a little to make it heard.

There are times I do want that heavy industrial dance sound, like when I’m listening to a band like KMFDM, but that stuff is more for dancing and strobe lights. The tunes on “No Gods No Monsters” aren’t danceable enough to pull it off. The one exception to this is “Godhead” which is danceable as fuck, and definitely had me thinking of the clubbing days of my early twenties. Regrettably, it is the exception, and most of the music is what you might hear played too loud at a strange party where you don’t know anybody. Eventually, you seek shelter in the kitchen, secretly hoping one of the speakers blows under the strain, so you can return to the living room and have a human (non-shouted) conversation with that interesting punk girl reclining on the couch. I digress, but you get the idea.

There are some good songs on the record, notably “Flipping the Bird” which gives voice to said punk girl’s inner voice as she absently nods to the drunken advances of randos at the aforementioned party. 

“You tell me who you think I am
And I agree with you but deep inside
I am flipping you the bird again”

Nice. Somehow just mentally flipping the bird is even more dismissive. Like the dude in question isn’t worth her bothering to lift a finger, even if only to tell him off.

Thematically, the record lives up to its name, with a lot of songs exploring the problem of religion and authority in general. There is also an apocalyptic quality that leaves you with the distinct feeling that everything is not going to turn out OK. I’m reading a dystopian future sci-fi horror by Jeff VanderMeer called “Borne”. The book features the complete collapse of society, with terrifying bio-engineered monsters including a gargantuan bear called “Mord” that is worshiped like some sort of vengeful God. “No Gods No Masters” would be a good soundtrack for the movie version.

This record is actually a two-album set, with a whole extra CD of “bonus tracks” that collectively add up to a very bloated 83 minutes of playing time.

The ‘bonus’ songs are mostly more original compositions, but there are two covers: a plodding and forgettable version of David Bowie’s “Starman” and an inspired version of Patti Smith’s “Because the Night.” The latter is a duet with the Screaming Females. I’ve always loved the vocals of Screaming Females frontwoman Marissa Paternoster, but haven’t always loved their music. Getting her singing alongside Manson is a real treat, and while they don’t beat out the Springsteen or Patti Smith versions, they put themselves in the conversation.

The second CD wraps up strong, with a hard rock murder ballad (“Destroying Angels”) that I’d love to hear as a folk song, and a little more industrial dance action with “Time Will Destroy Everything” (complete with some metallic synth effects on the vocals as though some robot from the future has come back to deliver the song’s titular message).

“No Gods No Masters” has the material for one good 50-minute record, but it is bloated with a whole lot of unnecessary and indulgent content. Even the packaging can’t resist excess. It comes in a small box containing a lyrics booklet, a foldout poster, four head shots of the band with pink shapes superimposed on their faces (?) along with the two albums. I found myself wanting to part with it for space considerations alone.

As for the music, I spent a lot of time mining for the nuggets (see “best tracks” below), all the while wanting to dodge lesser songs that were like pockets of bad air, threatening to turn the whole experience sour at any moment. As I’ve said many times before - less is more.

Best tracks: Godhead, Anonymous XXX, Flipping the Bird, This City Will Kill You, Because the Night, Destroying Angels, Time Will Destroy Everything