The release of Garbage’s latest record, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, stood out as a moment for the band to follow a path less travelled.
On one hand, it was forced: a switch up in creative process largely dictated by necessity – frontwoman Shirley Manson’s hip replacement surgery forcing them to record sessions separate from one another; on the other, Garbage’s approach to their eighth studio record was led by a natural desire to push themselves into new sonic territory, one that didn’t rely on the aggression and attitude that had featured prominently on previous efforts.
For Manson, being able to let herself relent during the making of Let All That We Imagine… shifted her own mindset as an artist, and it’s one she’s been enjoying exploring.
Backstage at Good Things 2025 in Melbourne, both Manson and Butch Vig are enthusiastic about where their latest album has been able to take them since its release back in May.
“It always feels like a privilege to make and release a record into the world, and have people like yourself listen to it. It’s never gotten old for us.” Manson says. “I think we’re all very grateful. We’re very proud of this record and it’s been given a fighting reception, which is always exciting! The songs also really fit into our set — a lot of people have commented on how the new songs sit well with the older songs too, which is a huge compliment.”
Vig takes us back to the early phase of the album process. “It was interesting for us as a band… We don’t ever want to go back and make records like our first album, we’re constantly trying to find ways to push ourselves. Even if we try to not sound like Garbage, we still sound like Garbage! Just because of the sensibility in how we play, and in how Shirley uses her voice. She has allowed us, as a band, to go on so many sonic tangents in our songs.”
With Vig and fellow Garbage bandmates Duke Erikson and Steve Marker creating the instrumentation in two different Californian studios while Manson worked on lyrics and vocals from her bedroom in Los Angeles, they were able to look intimately at how things had worked for them until this point. The nooks and crannies of their songwriting and musicianship were able to be picked apart and represented in fresh ways.
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“Because of the way we’d made this record, the boys and I were completely separate,” Manson remembers. “I had decided that the world seemed really horrible to me at the time of making this record. Violent and intolerant. It freaked me out. I realised I was so powerless.
“I made a decision, a very conscious decision, to try and bring real beauty into what we were doing. That was important to me. Our sound, historically, has been quite hard. To allow ourselves to yield a little felt special and new.”
“Every record that we make, we want it to have its own very specific personality,” she adds. “The record prior to this one, No Gods No Masters, was very aggressive; I was in a fury about where I saw the world was headed. We ended up exactly where I thought we would be. I realised that I had to change my tactics. Being angry and aggressive wasn’t going to get us anywhere. I wanted to infuse our world with love.”
Moments of Let All That We Imagine… have the DNA of early Garbage ferocity threaded throughout (“There’s No Future in Optimism”, “Chinese Fire Horse”), yet the profoundly human nature of this album shines through Manson’s ability to blend anger with meditation and clarity in perspective.
Both musicians are excited to see where a diverse palette of new influences are set to take them.
“All of us in the band, myself included, we’ve spent our whole lives making music,” Vig muses. “I don’t put our records on, whether they’re Garbage records or records I’ve produced. As an artist, I’m always curious and interested about what’s coming next. I don’t really know what our legacy is — I think that’s up for you to decide.”
“When we were making this record, [we thought] it might be our last. But it’s not. We’ve played a lot of shows this year. We played South America, we’ve just done a two and a half month run in North America, we went to Mexico… we just played in Auckland, and now we’re here. We don’t know how much longer we can do this for, so let’s just do it while we can. Until we can’t.”
Once Garbage’s Australian tour wraps, the band have a brief amount of downtime planned before their focus turns to their next project. As Vig enthuses, “We don’t look back, we keep moving forward.”
“For the first time in my life, I’m really aware of my own mortality,” Manson admits. “It infuses your work. It affects my discipline now. Like, we’re looking at our last word, what will that last word be? It’s important, though, because it makes the stakes really high.
“That’s exciting, because it’s one of the things we’ve been really good at as a band. Igniting our enthusiasm and our vitality. I think some bands get so tired and they get bored with one another, they don’t challenge each other. We still have something that is really remarkable.”
Find out more about Garbage’s Australian tour here. Find out more about Good Things 2025 here.
