Album Review: Let All That We Imagine Be The Light by Garbage

Garbage have always thrived in the wreckage, blending pop hooks with futuristic industrial grime and wrapping huge choruses in barbed wire. But on their eighth studio album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, something unexpected rises from the rubble: a flicker of cautious hope, a bruised kind of optimism that lies just beneath the surface. Written during frontwoman Shirley Manson's recovery from hip surgery, the record is steeped in reflection and resilience, anchored by a refusal to succumb to despair.

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They were deemed too perfect, probably a 'fake' record company creation. Surely it must be the vaguely anonymous guys pulling the creative strings, right? You would have hoped all that would be long behind us and yet when the promo rounds for this new album began the misogyny once again reared its ugly head in those ageist clickbait straplines. Plus ça change.

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The band still have their best qualities intact - no-nonsense music and, in Shirley Manson, a vocalist on great form It is nearly 30 years since Garbage proclaimed how they were Only Happy When It Rains. Yet now they have reached their eighth album, Shirley Manson and co have turned the tables, and are looking out from under their dense cloud in search of the light. In Manson's words, they are seeking "a different kind of energy… a more constructive one".

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Among the central pillars of the Garbage approach to music is an unflinching resolve. It comes through in music and lyrics alike, in songs about love, hate, sorrow, and struggle. Throughout the highs and lows of the last band’s three decades, it has been their hallmark, providing them with a structural integrity that has endured through all manner of sonic experiments.

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Eight albums and three decades in, it's likely impossible for Garbage to write and record music that wouldn't immediately give away its creators' identities and yet 'Let All That We Imagine Be The Light' is a stellar example of an artist pushing their collective boundaries while retaining full control over their artistic identity. Less abrasive than 2021's socio-politically- driven 'No Gods No Masters', here the outfit's gaze is turned inward; likely as much a case of 'been there, done that' as the consequence of vocalist Shirley Manson undergoing successive hip surgeries in 2023 and 2024. On album closer 'The Day That I Met God', Shirley shows off a delicate side to her voice that her trademark biting lyrics don't often allow for, as '70s-inspired spacey synths - part Bowie, part Muse - meander around a six-minute ballad.

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