GARBAGE

With the global pandemic dominating the news over the past two years, it’s easy to forget prior events. But 2018 was a particularly nauseating year for the worst in international politics. In the USA, work began on the Trump’s border wall with Mexico. Refugee immigrant children were separated from their parents at a border detention centre. In the UK, former British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a Russian nerve agent. Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Kashoggi was assassinated…

The conversations that Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson was having with friends and family around such news stories became so intense and regular that they inevitably spilled into her songwriting. And it’s against that backdrop of division, hatred, greed, corruption and moral bankruptcy that drove the band’s seventh studio album, 2021’s No Gods,. It’s not only one of the best albums of their career, it’s also the single most topical rock album of 2021.