Shirley Manson is done playing nice. Garbage return with “Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty”, a snarling, sharp-toothed second taste of their upcoming album Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, due out 30 May via BMG. It’s a song that hisses before it bites — guitars grind, bass throbs, and Manson, as ever, commands the chaos with defiant poise.
The track’s title nods to the original instrumental the band sent Manson, then cheekily named AKA Bad Kitty. But behind the feline snarl is something far more ferocious: a rejection of patriarchal expectations and a full-throated reclamation of space and power. It’s classic Garbage — politically charged, musically volatile, and delivered with theatrical fury.
“When I was young, I didn’t really notice how things worked. People like to shuffle older women off the lot, because you start to see the chessboard in a way you didn’t when you were younger. When you’re young, you’re wanting to get on with your life, have an adventure, do what you love, and you’re conditioned by the society that you grew up in, so a lot of the time you don’t see what’s going on. Then, as you get older, you start to see how things are stacked up against some of us – not all of us. I am outraged by the way the world treats blacks and browns and gays and trans peoples and animals and women. Living in America over the last couple of years, the absolute war on women in America is astounding. All the rights that we felt had been secured are starting to get pushed back into the Middle Ages. It is something that I can no longer tolerate silently. It’s not just infuriating, it’s alarming. It’s frightening.” – Shirley Manson
The album, their first since 2021’s No Gods No Masters, arrives in the wake of global tumult. While that record was praised for its “thrumming mix of goth and orchestral pop” (The New York Times), this new chapter aims to illuminate the darkness. “We needed something that could carry us through the madness,” Manson has said. Let All That We Imagine Be The Light is their torch held high in the storm.
To celebrate the release, Garbage will hit the road this fall with Happy Endings, a massive 31-date North American headline tour — their first in nearly a decade. Kicking off at iconic venues like Brooklyn Paramount, The Anthem in D.C., and San Francisco’s The Warfield, the tour promises a long-overdue dose of catharsis and grit from one of the most enduring forces in alternative rock.
With all four original members — Manson, Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig — still onboard, Garbage remains a band not just with history, but with bite. Thirty years in, they’re still pushing buttons, raising hell, and sounding more necessary than ever.
Stream “Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty” HERE.
