Finding Instruction In Life's Dark Matter

"When I was very young and I was very hard on myself, I was very judgmental. I was very hard on others. I find now that I've moved through my life, that to be that inflexible and that hard is not a happy place really to live, it causes a lot of anxiety and a lot of anger," Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson says.

"For a lot of different reasons I have to work at not being anything or everything that I want to be at any given moment, [seeking forgiveness] for stupid things I say, people I hurt, things that I do I wish I hadn't. I try as an adult now that I'm older to go easier on myself. And I've found that by going easier on myself I'm so much more tolerant of when people interrupt my space or upset me in some way or another or I meet a conflicting perspective from my own.

"Actually it takes a lot of strength to actively forgive someone, and actively forgive ourselves."

"That's not to say that I don't have flare-ups or sort of immediate reactions where I feel angry or I feel upset, but if I give myself some time I have learned to move through situations and forgive someone in the same way that I would hope they would extend that forgiveness or understanding to me."

Being kind to oneself, and forgiving ourselves and one another, is the throughline for Garbage's sixth record Strange Little Birds. "I think the overriding theme of the record is about forgiveness — forgiveness of yourself for not being perfect in every way, for hurting people, for making mistakes, and it's also [about] forgiving others.

"I think we're scared that somehow we're going to be made to feel like a fool if we show forgiveness, and I think culturally we've made the mistake of equating forgiveness with weakness. And actually it takes a lot of strength to actively forgive someone, and actively forgive ourselves."

The 49-year-old Scottish singer has now been making music for 35 years — 21 of which have been spent with Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig in Garbage. The band toured last year for the 20th anniversary of their self-titled debut, with Strange Little Birds, their second album without the backing of a major label, described as an act of "com[ing] full circle", the two records like "twins in a funny way, thematically and sonically": "We definitely wanted to make a dark record… I think that darkness speaks to that which was present in our debut record.

"Culturally we're encouraged to be scared of the darkness, but I feel dark matter, dark information is helpful to instruct you in your life. Darkness instructs us about the light and I think therefore we shouldn't just shut that information out.

"Experience is invaluable, and it's empowering, and it's magical."

"To be intellectually dark does not require your entire day to be immersed in darkness. I think it's just a willingness to look behind the curtain, look into the corners, look behind the surface of things. I think at any point if you look behind the facade you will find a whole cauldron of conflicting shades of black and white, in everyone, in every situation, at all times. I think that's part of the human condition, and I think we're currently living in times where we're forced into pretending that we don't coexist with all these conflicting emotions.

"I don't think that's what being a human being is. I think we have moments of confidence and then moments of crushing self-doubt. We can feel elated one minute and we can feel really disappointed the next."

Self-doubt, while it can be a "helpful instructor" to creativity, no longer inhibits Manson. She considers herself lucky enough to have enjoyed a long career: "You do anything for long enough, if you do something for 21 years, unless you're a complete moron, you will find that you get pretty good at it… l just survived long enough to grow some balls and to find some confidence in what I do, and that is a lovely place to be. It's like solid ground on which you can stand. Experience is invaluable, and it's empowering, and it's magical."

On Strange Little Birds the band aimed to "rely on gut feeling" in the studio and to "divorce judgment from the performance".

"I think if all of us in the small room that we record in feel a physical change while somebody's performing a take in the studio then in this record we trusted that sort of shifting of molecules. If you can create an energy shift, you know you've done something good, and you know that will translate outside of the studio to a broader audience.

"Whether you love our records or not, there's a heartbeat on that record, I defy anyone to tell me otherwise. You can feel a pulse and to do that on record is very hard, and it doesn't always happen, and it's magical when it does."