On the Road Again
Live Reviews:

Garbage
November 9, 1998
The Warehouse, Toronto, ON

For a band which is often criticized as being a slickly produced studio outfit, Shirley and the boys showed a capacity crowd at The Warehouse Monday night that Garbage is a band at least equally adept at taking the stage, and just turning that mother out.

With an aggressive sonic punch that only backed down for the ballads, Garbage ran through an impressive list of hits and album tracks from their two discs, the self-titled 1995 debut "Garbage," and this year's "Version 2.0." After a competent but not particularily interesting opening by New York's GVSB, it was Garbage's turn to show that similar instrumentation can have a much more enjoyable effect when it's wrapped around lush pop songs such as "Only Happy When it Rains" and "I Think I'm Paranoid."

Front Girl Shirley Manson was the obvious crowd favourite, and her sneering, cursing, suggestively sexual persona was much in evidence as she shadow boxed around the stage, orange hair tied back into a ponytail. When she picked up a guitar about four songs in, the crowd loved it, even if she was only banging out power chords during the chorus.

While The Warehouse is infamous for its crappy acoustics, none of its bad sound problems were in evidence Monday night as Steve Marker, Duke Erikson, Butch Vig and Shirley (along with bassust Jon Schulman and the assistance of an unknown amount of pre-recorded background noise) created a Wall of Sound that filled the room. I would hesitate to suggest that any of Shirley's vocals were pre-recorded, but she did seem to have some assistance during at least a few of the choruses. Not that it matters.

All the hits were played; "Queer" was given a reVamping, Shirley admonishing the crowd for not coming to her rescue when she "fucked up" during "Stupid Girl" (she missed her cue and had to restart a verse). She then begged the crowd to help "Educate the kids of Canada" by buying the GVSB disc freak*on*ica.

This was Garbage's third Toronto-area show this year, having played The Phoenix half-a-year ago and Molson Park this summer as part of the Summersault line-up; the band just keep getting better.

Shirley is one hell of a performer, capable of effortlessly looking great, sounding amazing, and capturing the attention of a room full of boys and girls. If the guys in the band seem a bit old, it's only because they've spent their lifetimes figuring out how to make such a beautiful noise. There's just no good reason why these guys are just bigger than god...hell of a show.