Shirley Manson says new Garbage album is "a miracle to me"

It's funny how lyrics can take on new meaning months or years after they're written.

While Shirley Manson and Garbage were deliberately writing about the world's potential to devolve into a "dystopian horror show," they didn't think that reality would arrive faster than their album.

Manson tells Q104.3's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke that the band finished the lion's share of its seventh album, No Gods No Masters, last year a matter of days before pandemic lockdowns would have shut down their operation anyway.

The record deals heavily in political, social and environmental issues, and we had plenty of those in 2020.

"Every time something would happy, I'd be like, 'Oh my god! Am I a witch?'" Manson recalls of following the news last year.

Predicting the downfall of society is all well and good, but more importantly, Garbage had a good time doing it. Manson says she and her bandmates were pleasantly surprised to learn that they've still got it, more than two-and-a-half decades since their debut and five years since their last studio album.

"We didn't set out with any sort of agenda," she said. "We're all pleasantly surprised at the vigor in the record. It's very difficult being in a band for 25 years to keep the energy going. It really feels like sort of a miracle to me that we've made this record."

Watch the full conversation via the video player above!