Garbage: ‘Blood For Poppies’ (free download)

Regular readers of withguitars will know that I rate Garbage very highly; indeed Ms Shirley Manson made the Top Ten Alt Rock Female list I compiled for a feature last year. So it’s safe to say I was somewhat interested when they announced their return from a 7 year hiatus, a break that saw Shirley running around killing people in a TV series while Butch Vig twiddled his knob and reminisced about producing some record called ‘Nevermind’.

So what does this newly reformed band sound like, have they returned all guns blazing with a searing hot slice of industrial electro rock? Unfortunately not instead we are served up a luke warm wah wah guitar, cod reggae shambles that at best resembles a Gwen Stefani B side and at worst a song even Pink would refuse to perform.

Still around the 2.30 mark you get a brief flash of a more traditional Garbage sound so I wouldn’t write off the album just yet, although a safer bet would be to start the petition to get Curve out of retirement. 6/10
Jamie Gambino