Garbage Announces They’ve Officially Finished Album #7!
After months of recording and mixing, Garbage has now officially finished album #7! We’re now getting pretty close to being able to hear the band’s new album, the followup to their 2016 record, Strange Little Birds. It’s expected out in spring 2021.
Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson shared two updates about this exciting milestone. Her first was a humble post late last night. She shared:
There were far more important things happening this week so I didn’t want to crow but we have big news in the house of garbage.
It is official. We have finally finished #7 and delivered it, hook line and sinker to our new business partners @bmguk.
I sat tonight with our engineer (and my long suffering husband) to listen to it from top to bottom and I have to admit , I felt pretty smug about it all, if the truth be told.
Love you lots. Wish you were here to enjoy the initial listening process with us. However you will get to judge it for yourselves soon enough. Can’t WAIT for you all to hear it. Thank you for loving on us. Hope we haven’t let you down. I don’t believe we have. But you will all ultimately be the judge of THAT.
💝
Then this morning, Shirley posted another photo, this time celebrating her bandmates in completing the album:
I took this photo of my better four fifths up in Palm Springs right at the very beginning of the recording process for #7. How we all pulled the completion of this record off in the COVID-19 era is really quite a mystery, even to us. Communication during the making of a record is always complicated but this one took the biscuit.
It feels a little sad not to be together to celebrate our group efforts. Having to do it via flippant little comments on text and email seems a tad insufficient but needs must as they say and it’s always good to change things up every once in a while. You know what they say about the 7 year itch. Sometimes you’ve just got to give it a wee scratch. Congratulations gentlemen.
✨⚡️🌙💫 You did it again.
This is exciting news! And as troubled as the world is lately, this is a rare bit of something good to look forward to.
Making the Album & Early Songs
Garbage first started working on new songs in spring 2017. That summer, we got a taste of their upcoming 7th album when they shared “No Horses” as a single. It was one of five songs they’d already started that year. They continued working on new songs early in 2018 and into that spring, though studio time halted when they toured in celebration of Version 2.0 turning 20.
For Record Store Day: Black Friday in late 2018, Garbage shared another new song; “Destroying Angels” was released more widely at the beginning of 2019. Whereas “No Horses” was apocalyptic, “Destroying Angels” was a murder song. It sounds like the next Garbage album will be pretty dark! Though, as they said February last year, it’ll be balanced out with some light, too. And, of course, sugar and spice and everything nice.
Following the 2018 celebration of the 20th anniversary of their sophomore album Version 2.0, Garbage spent much of early 2019 working on their upcoming 7th studio album. Last year they teased the “darkness and light” and “sugar and spice” they were creating in the studio. In April 2019, they were in the studio again. In mid-September, Garbage returned to the studio, announcing it as “Day 1” of recording the new album. Did that mark the official beginning of the recording and production, following months of writing and demoing? Or was it just “Day 1” of that particular session? It’s unclear, but we do know the band continued making progress! Garbage re-entered the studio in January and shared an update at the end of February.
Finally, at the end of March, drummer Butch Vig shared an update. In addition to saying the album was going into the mixing phase, he also shared a short clip of one of the new songs!
A “Poppier” Direction
Last month, Shirley did a few interviews, and naturally, Garbage’s upcoming 7th album came up. In her interview with SPIN, she first talked about where they’re at with recording and when we can hear it. Their original plan was to release it in early spring 2021, but now its release date is uncertain. But what is certain is that the record will sound different from Garbage’s latest albums. In addition to “lots of guitars,” it will also feature a “poppier” sound filled with melodies and hooks. We love Garbage’s poppier material from past albums, so consider us pretty excited!
Read Shirley’s exchange with SPIN about the new album:
What can you say about the new album? Can we know what it’s called or when it’s coming?
I could tell you, but I probably won’t because of the situation … We finished our record literally a week before lockdown really happened. So we got all the recording done, which was astounding for us, so we now have that record sort of in the can. It’s currently getting mixed, so there is action happening on that front, and it’s keeping us all sort of vaguely tethered to the real world. There were plans literally the week before the shutdown that we were going to release it in early spring of next year. Now I have no idea.It’s certainly a different-sounding record than our last couple. It has lots of guitars, lots of melodies and hooks. It’s poppier than the last record. We were very inspired by the weird, subversive pop of Roxy Music — that was kind of our muse. Not that it sounds anything like Roxy music, but that was definitely something we thought about a lot.
I can’t wait to hear it; I hope we’re all around to hear it.
[Laughs.] You have now revealed yourself as to why you wanted to talk to me — you, too, have a heart of dark.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Shirley talked her podcast, The Jump, and about Garbage’s evolving plans to release music:
What’s the future of Garbage?
A bright future. The sad thing is, we were looking at the most fun year we’ve had in quite some time. We’re restructuring our business and changing the way we release records from the way that we have in the last eight years. We have a lot of touring lined up, which of course we can’t carry out. We have a new record being mixed as we speak that’s going to come out next year. We’ve got three more songs to go and then we’re done. And then we’ll concentrate on the artwork and start planning for next year. We were really excited. We were talking with our team this morning, and things are still looking hopeful.
Additional Clues
In June 2019, NME shared an interview with Shirley Manson about politics, the future of rock music, and, of course, their new album. She revealed that the music is “cinematic” and “pretty personal.”
Last year in October, Garbage teased fans with a handful of full and partial song titles, including the following:
- [unreadable] About You
- This City Will Kill You
- The Creeps
- [unreadable] K
- Waiting For God To Show Up
- Anonymous Sexx
Finished & Ready to Hear
It’s exciting to know that the album is done and ready for fans to hear… soon! You can catch up on all that’s gone into making the album so far here, and get ready for more updates as the band moves closer to release day. We expect to hear the poppy new album in early or mid-2021. Keep checking back here for all the latest Garbage music news.
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