Garbage Talks Ending Band's Hiatus, Songwriting Process for "Not Your Kind of People"

StunvolumeOn Tuesday, Garbage ended their seven-year hiatus by releasing their fifth studio album, Not Your Kind of People.  Multi-instrumentalist Duke Erikson says that the idea to make a new album snowballed from wanted to schedule a single show.

“We just started talking on the phone again, we were talking about doing a gig and then we were talking about doing a couple of gigs and then we decided maybe we should record a couple songs to make it all fit somehow and then the next thing you know we’re making a record,” Erikson tells ABC News Radio.  “It just felt like the right time.”

Drummer Butch Vig added that the band’s songwriting process is one that’s based on mutual respect.  “It felt very comfortable to sort fall back into the way we write because I think all of us appreciate being in a band where everyone’s idea is valued,” Vig explains to ABC News Radio.  “I produced a lot of bands where one person writes the song, one person makes the decisions and I can always sense frustration from creative musicians when they’re not getting their say and in Garbage we are really a democracy.  A dysfunctional democracy, but we are a democracy.”

In addition, Vig says that the band chose “Not Your Kind of People” as the title track because of its message.  “That’s very much a song about celebrating the fact that it’s okay to be different, you know, to be an outsider and to feel like it’s okay to feel like a freak and that theme runs through a lot of the songs on the album,” reveals the drummer.  “We made a very conscious effort to try and make them somehow have a thread.”

Not Your Kind of People is now available as a standard 11-track CD, as a digital download and as a deluxe edition that includes extra tracks “The One,” “What Girls Are Made Of,” “Bright Tonight” and “Show Me.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio