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This is a great return to form for Garbage, and I really, really love it.
I got the MP3 download "deluxe version," but I don't really understand what is "deluxe" about it... because it has all the same songs as the non-deluxe CD and non-deluxe MP3 download of the album.
Suffice to say, if you liked the first 2 Garbage albums, as well as Bleed Like Me and the harder rock songs on Beautiful Garbage (such as "Shut Your Mouth," "Parade","Nobody Loves You", and "Untouchable"), you will like Not Your Kind Of People.
Please note: I'm not saying I *don't* like "Androgyny," "Can't Cry These Tears," "Cup of Coffee," or "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go)" off Beautiful Garbage. In fact, "Can't Cry These Tears" and "Cup of Coffee" are probably my favorite songs off that album, after "Shut Your Mouth": I loved the pop-music-throwback/girl-group/wall-of-sound production values of "Can't Cry These Tears" and I also really loved the eerie and mournful sound of the Theremin used in the downtempo-triphop-chill-ish "Cup of Coffee."
But "Androgyny," and "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go)" aren't exactly "Supervixen" or "Only Happy When It Rains," or "As Heaven As Wide" or "Not My Idea" or "Vow" or "Dog New Tricks." And they're definitely not "Temptation Waits," "I Think I'm Paranoid," "When I Grow Up", "Special," "Hammer In My Head," "Push It," "Dumb," or "Wicked Ways." And they also don't have the more trip-hoppy feel of "Queer," "A Stroke of Luck," "My Lover's Box" or "Milk" (from Garbage's debut) or "Medication," "The trick is to keep breathing," and "You look so fine" from Version 2.0. Those two songs don't even have much in common with the hooks and grooves of "Stupid Girl," which is probably the only real "pop song" on Garbage's debut. But then, Garbage changed the definition of what pop music could be with their debut album -- and that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, to me, songs like "Androgyny" and "Cherry Lips" were Garbage experimenting with a much more electronic and pop-y sound. They were well done, with the usual catchy hooks, excellent production values, and likeable as stand-alone songs... but as Garbage songs, they reminded me of that game on Sesame Street: "one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong."
I wasn't sorry when Garbage moved on to Bleed Like Me and got back to their usual alternation between hard rocking and trip-hoppy songs, with no more anomalous synth-pop like "Androgyny" or "Cherry Lips." Granted, to a certain extent, with all their crystal clear production values and the knob-twiddling and fader-pushing that created it, Garbage have always had a sort of synth-pop esthetic -- without the synth pop sound. (I say that being a huge lover of synth-pop and a lifelong fan of Depeche Mode, probably the most successful electronic band of all time.) I always felt Garbage were a grunge-guitars-meets-synth-pop-production-values kind of rock band, and I'm okay with that.
All of that having been said: If you like harder rocking Garbage, then Not Your Kind Of People has what you want in spades, starting with "Automatic Systematic Habit," continuing through "Blood For Poppies," "Control" (which has a fantastic harmonica riff when the drums and guitar kick in after the quiet intro), "I Hate Love," "Battle In Me," "Man on a Wire," and "The One."
If you like the more ballad-y or trip-hoppy or meditative Garbage, then you get that on Not Your Kind Of People, too, in the following songs: "Not Your Kind Of People," "Felt," "Sugar," "Beloved Freak," "Bright Tonight," and "Show Me."
And then there's the edgier, wackier song "What Girls Are Made Of" which would normally probably have been a B-side or included on a remix single... but instead is included on both the "deluxe" and non-deluxe versions of the album "Not Your Kind Of People."
A few months after NYKOP came out, I got the chance to see Garbage at a small venue -- the amateur league baseball stadium in their former home town of Madison, WI. They were great, just great, and Shirley was very warm and welcoming to the audience, which seemed to include a lot of old friends and family of theirs. It was an oddly intimate show, despite being in a baseball stadium (and it rained before the show, so I was afraid it would rain the whole time... but it didn't, yay!).
I wish I'd seen them during the height of their mad popularity circa Version 2.0 at a huge stadium show. But I've listened to and enjoyed (and brooded to and rewound and replayed) their music for decades now, lamenting their seeming breakup and disappearance. So I was just happy to see them live at all, because I never had.
I'm so glad they came out with this album. NYKOP isn't a retread, and it isn't boring. But it isn't an out-of-place, jarring departure from their classic Garbage sound the way "Androgyny" and "Cherry Lips" were, either.
It's just a solid Garbage album, pushing them further into the 21st century with a refinement of the catchy hooks they've always had, without sounding like something you've heard from them before. The first listen through, I thought, Wow, this almost sounds like a "long lost" Garbage album... Yet it's too topical and "now" to be that. The new flourishes they've added give it that extra oomph while still telling you: this is a hard-rocking Garbage album, in the classic sense.
And there was much rejoicing...!
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