JAN WOOLF finds out where she came from and where she’s going amid Pete Townsend’s tribute to 1970s youth culture
Garbage, O2 Academy, Leeds
Post-gothic pleasures from masters of rock, electronica and grunge
Engaging: Shirley Manson
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MARJORIE MAYO, JOHN GREEN and MARIA DUARTE review Sudan, Remember Us, From Hilde, With Love, The Road to Patagonia, and F1
MARIA DUARTE recommends the very human portrayal of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist in Putin’s Russia
This is a remarkable set of hop hip, salsa, reggae, soul, cumbia and traditional Mexican music finds TONY BURKE
MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys the perverse jocularity, depraved glamour and inner turbulence of the Tate gallery’s tribute to Leigh Bowery
“THIS is the apocalypse,” warns Shirley Manson on the song No Horses and the starkness of that sentiment is undercut by a driving beat and backwards guitar, making it the perfect virtual soundtrack for Extinction Rebellion, staging a protest across town in an attempt to get the government to avert climate Armageddon.
It’s one of the few timely interventions by Garbage during their first Leeds gig for 20 years for, as futuristic as their fusion of industrial rock, electronic music and grunge sounded when they released their eponymous debut album in 1995, the US-British quartet have never really embraced change.
Their distinctive post-gothic sound is both their biggest asset and noose, surviving even the absence of indisposed producer and percussionist Butch Vig, replaced on this tour by Matt Walker. Wisely, they acknowledge that double-edged sword with an 18-song set tipped towards the nostalgia of their early albums.
With no new material to promote, this gig is something of a return to the 20th-anniversary celebration of 1998’s Version 2.0, and it’s hard to resist.
Opening track Control is a blast of punk energy not unlike a pop savvy The Prodigy while on #1 Crush, Manson employs her contralto snarl to alternatively seduce and terrorise.
An engaging frontwoman throughout, she circles the stage with an undercut shock of pink hair while preaching the value of staying curious and protecting one another.
Despite a technical glitch — the show pauses at one point while stage hands try and fix it — she remains in strong voice throughout. The band slyly acknowledge their influences, with the rock-driven Wicked Ways successfully seguing into Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus and Special extends its interpolation of The Pretenders Talk Of The Town with an additional verse from the original track.
The band break out of their characteristic sound on closing number Even Though Our Love Is Doomed, which taking their trademark style and slows it down to the ominous, melancholy pace of a Portishead.
Drawn from latest album Strange Little Birds, it suggests that change could be afoot for the band after all.
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