Back From the Dead - Garbage 5/25/12

Garbage

House of Blues

Atlantic City

5/25/12

Beyonce wasn’t the only one making a comeback in Atlantic City (NJ) this weekend, rock band Garbage thrilled an enthusiastic crowd at Showboat’s House of Blues on Friday, helping to kick off the holiday weekend with a bang.

The band released an excellent new album last week, Not Your Kind of People, and is on the road playing intimate venues to get warmed up after a seven year touring hiatus.

Scottish vixen Shirley Manson, with a powerful voice can that still go from cool purr to fiery growl in seconds, prowled the stage like an angry jungle cat telling tales of stupid girls and bad boyfriends,  while legendary producer and talented drummer Butch Vig thumped and thundered behind her.  The two other founding members, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker, capably split guitar duties, spraying and lasering the crowd with riffs and bursts of guitar brilliance.

The twenty-one song career spanning setlist was heavy on material from their breakthrough first album but included a few cuts from each stop in their career and movie songs “#1 Crush” and James Bond theme “The World Is Not Enough”. The group is no nostalgia act though, their new material is as powerful as their old – current single “Blood For Poppies”, the desperate, careening “Man on a Wire” and throbbing, rumbling encore starter “Automatic Systematic Habit” all showed that the band is as vital now as when their career started eighteen years ago. Fittingly they finished off the frenzied crowd with a knockout punch - the powerful “Vow” from their debut album, a scorned lover’s promise to “come back from the dead” to settle unfinished business. Garbage is back. 


pete974@aol.com


sadly I was unable to obtain clearance from the band's press to photo them in time for the show, you can check out my other work:


see my photography work here


see my other music writing here