Since their early incarnation in the ’90’s, Garbage has been a mainstay in the alternative+ music world. Band members Shirley Manson (main vocals, guitars, keyboards), Duke Erikson (guitar, bass, keyboards), Steve Marker (guitar, keyboards), and Butch Vig (drums, percussion, keyboards) have been distinctive in their cake-like-blending of staunchly-driven guitar riffs, complimentary darkly-layered synths, finally iced with Shirley’s lightly Scottish-accented vocals. Steve Marker was quoted saying the band wanted to “take pop music and make it as horrible as we can.” Vice magazine wrote (per Wikipedia) that from their singular concoctions of styles like trip hop, grunge, rock, techno, and shoegaze, Garbage “has forged a kind of queasy originality” in the search of “a kind of perverse beauty.“
The track Wolves recently released with Garbage’s new 2021 album ‘No Gods No Masters’ finds the band phasing back to their 90’s roots and the sound that originally launched them to stardom. The song and video relating to the age-old fable of the dueling wolves first popularized by televangelist Billy Graham in his book The Holy Spirit: Activating God’s Power in Your Life.
Songfacts® concisely states:
“Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson wrote this song after coming across an eastern European folktale of a grandfather teaching his grandson about life. The old man uses a metaphor of two wolves – one evil and one good – fighting within him to explain his inner conflicts to his grandson. When his grandson asks which wolf wins, the grandfather says whichever wolf he chooses to feed is the one that wins. Here, Shirley Manson references the dueling inner wolves’ legend to illustrate the power of youth and the danger within.”
“Which one of my two wolves
will I give my attention to tonight?
Which one will I decide to feed?
Which one will I decide to fight?
I was impulsive, I confess, talked a lot behind your back
I was judgmental, played too cool, I was not so nice”
Clearly gifted music video artist Javi Miamor (director, animator, painter) directed this gorgeous chop-shop, stutter-stepped, mixed-media mess of a video. Beautiful, brilliant and beguiling, the video highlights the heart-fully-fed wolves creative integration with Shirley’s unbridled joie-de-vivre perhaps only slightly tempered by her self-admitted body-dysmorphia. A visual-smorgasbord of attention-seeking youth, good, evil, God, and wolves blended and drenched in sexual imagery, the latter being the cause of the required YouTube age-verification prior to watching.
“We were young and we loved attention
We were drunk and we loved attention
We were sad and we loved attention
We were scared and we loved attention
Our kind of God is a crazy kind of God“
- Garbage’s music can be bought here and from Apple here, listened to on Spotify here, and followed on Facebook here
love this. I heard it with Everlast, Whitey Sings the Blue’s also playing in my head and these words cropped up here’s the impromptu
the sick don’t lie and pain does bring a cry, the death of God does not suit you and your now selling Jesus who just won’t die
mummy is making ends meet washing other people’s feet and it’s how daddy earns his keep, snatching sweets from the child in the street. Well that’s just fine, stealing stolen clothes off next doors washing line
making friends with Uncle Fred, afterall who’s gonna pay for all this pain and for the wine and bread. With one foot in the past and half an eye on a future, with nobody holding your hand are you gonna shoot up because the death of God does not suit you, the sale of Jesus wearing new clothes from next doors washing line.
Jesus, who just won’t die
Jesus, who just won’t die
the sick don’t lie and the pain no cry
your selling Jesus who just won’t die
just won’t die.
the structure of Wolves brings both aspects into play, into her play… powerfully done. Great write up, again.
Yep, love it. If you haven’t yet seen it, you should check out “The Man From Earth” movie from 2007. Great stuff my friend. Thank you 🙂