PHEW. Gasp. Choke. Wow. Flutter. Cough. Sob. Last night's Garbage show provided us with all these noises. For Butch Vig and his instrumental cohorts are big on sculpting deft soundscapes. As well as employing their crunching guitars to wondrous effect, they last night marshalled a battery of precise tonal washes, pulsing swooshes, and evocative little noise-scrapings. Subtly powerful; powerfully subtle. Pleasingly skewed, too.
Garbage invited us into their sonic foundry as it operated at full blast. Then they led us to its quieter corners, where owls hooted, a midnight wind rushed through rusted corrugated sheeting, and you could feel the slow glacial pull of primordial desire . . . whoops. Excuse me. I believe I've done gone ga-ga over Garbage. But audio-visual exposure to the band's frontwoman, Shirley Manson, can do this to a fellow, of course.
Blimey. A compelling waif, she slunk and prowled. Whilst employing the ironic vocal intonation of a latterday Debbie Harry on top Garbage tunes like Stupid Girl and Fix Me Now, Shirley performed a circular dressage routine, like a particularly sassy pony.
Crivvens. Jings. In response, young men removed their shirts and moshed themselves to a stage-front pulp at her feet. Meanwhile, elderly men were weeping inwardly and clutching their pint-glasses ever-tighter. Heck. Gulp.
Our own Bis, last night's opening act, were pure playground-punk-pop bliss - but Garbage? Whoo-hoo. Cor. Yum yum yum.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article