Producer Butch Vig described the second Garbage album, Version 2.0, as “the sound of a band growing up.”
The album features the band’s defining hits, “I Think I’m Paranoid,” “Push It,” and “Special.” But it also presented a group of musicians embracing new technology. Vig called the album a combination of “razor-sharp clarity and soft beauty.”
For Scottish singer Shirley Manson, it thrust her into conversations around authenticity and feminism. Manson didn’t look like a riot grrrl, but she embodied the punk spirit in a new way. Her own way.
In a 1996 interview with The Face, Manson said, “A lot of women still feel like they can’t play up their feminine side and be taken seriously as an artist, but I still see that as suffering at the hands of a male-dominated industry. I love to wear beautiful clothes and I love wearing make-up and I love for people to make me look as good as I possibly can.” Manson was BRAT before BRAT was a thing.
While most alt-rockers at the time screamed and shouted their rage, Manson’s delivery found power through restraint and digital maneuvering. Version 2.0—like Garbage as a band—is an ambitious statement against conventional alt-rock attitudes.
So Garbage used manipulation as an ethos, making Version 2.0 uniquely authentic.
“Bend Me, Shape Me”
On “I Think I’m Paranoid,” Manson borrows a hook from American Breed’s 1967 bubblegum hit “Bend Me, Shape Me.” But she turns the sentiment of their swooning love song into a broken anthem, the point of no return.
Bend me, break me any way you need me
All I want is you
The wide-eyed boy in American Breed’s song will do whatever the eye of his affection asks. It’s a safe bet. He knows he can return to his usual self when he pleases. However, when Manson writes of breaking to the whims of a partner’s needs, she admits to the lingering damage long after a relationship has ended.
Using Pro Tools, Garbage transformed Manson’s voice—distorted, fractured, time-stretched, and filtered. Near the song’s end, Manson’s humanity becomes a mutated “thing,” an object. Bend me, break me any way you need me.
“Push It”
Paranoia might be the album’s mission statement. “Push It” moves between dreamy verses and nightmarish choruses. Manson sings, Make the beats go harder, and that’s exactly what the band does.
It sounds like a digital tornado. Every sound is pushed to extremes, a degradation. Version 2.0 is one of the first mainstream albums recorded entirely with Pro Tools. The then-new technology occasionally shut down. Garbage pushed the program to its limits by stuffing the sessions with high-track accounts, almost daring it to quit.
When it did quit, the producers asked the software’s programmers to update the algorithm. Garbage wasn’t the only band blending rock and electronic music. But because Vig was responsible for alt-rock masterpieces like Nevermind and Siamese Dream, the digital flirtations seemed more shocking.
Authenticity
Vig helped bring alt-rock to mainstream audiences. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Cherub Rock” became avatars for authenticity. This wasn’t “Dr. Feelgood.” Still, the Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins albums utilized the same precision and high-end production as anything from Mötley Crüe or Guns N’ Roses.
Kurt Cobain thought so, too. When Nirvana followed up with In Utero, Cobain hired Steve Albini, an engineer who stridently shunned the “producer” title.
But Garbage is the sound of production. Studio gadgets and techniques became as important to the band as the drums and guitars.
Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, and Vig had been remixing songs for Nine Inch Nails and U2. They’d strip away the music, leaving only the vocals. The remixes took a new form with processed guitars, noise, distorted loops, and digital artifacts. A new kind of songwriting emerged and the process inspired them to form Garbage.
They discovered Manson when her band Angelfish appeared on MTV’s 120 Minutes. Marker saw the video for “Suffocate Me,” and invited Manson to Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, for an audition.
Technology
They built a band like they’d built tracks inside the computer. Garbage became the contrarian voice in the alt-rock age of “authenticity.” In the recording world, analog is considered “real”—while its digital counterpart is deemed cold and sterile. But tape machines, pianos, and guitars are types of technology, too.
On their 1995 self-titled debut, Garbage still sounded like a rock band. On hits like “Stupid Girl” and “Only Happy When It Rains,” the electronic elements play a supporting role.
With Version 2.0, the computer takes control. It’s a reverse engineering of the band. This wasn’t a room of music producers remixing songs. Instead, Garbage used computers to remix the very concept of a rock band. Like Radiohead on OK Computer, they used the era’s growing anxiety over changing technology and redefined the parameters of rock music.
Copy of a Copy
In 2018, Garbage reissued Version 2.0 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. In a statement, Manson called Version 2.0 “the quintessential Garbage record.” Vig agreed and said it’s “possibly our best album.” It also marked the band’s creative and commercial peak.
When 2001 arrived, revivalist garage rock bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes stripped things back again. Rock and roll is largely reactionary. How Jane’s Addiction and Nirvana reacted against Poison and Skid Row. But Julian Casablancas and Jack White made novelties out of something borrowed. In a way, it’s its own remix.
Still, all of it is just another choice. A manipulation. Sounding vintage in a modern age is really no different from using computer plug-ins. When the new millennium arrived, the future electro-grunge of Garbage sounded outdated.
Pro Tools had become the industry standard for recording. The computer was once used to push music into the future until the technology reached a point where it could be used to sound like the past.
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Photo by Gie Knaeps/Getty Images
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