Garbage killed it. The band sounded tight and the music scorched the Paradise Rock Club. Shirley Manson’s voice was angelic in parts, rough and ready in others. The band was stellar, slipping between atmospheric electronica for one track (the always stunning ballad Milk) and balls out rock on another (my personal favorite Why Do You Love Me).

Even touring behind the new album, the setlist was a nod to their best material and the music their fans wanted to hear. The trippy electropop track Temptation Waits from Version 2.0 and the slick and slithery Queer made for a brilliant start. All of their radio hits from Stupid Girl to Push It put in an appearance but when they veered off (Metal Heart from their last studio album Bleed Like Me and the sublime The Trick is to Keep Breathing) it was always to somewhere great. The new material fit easily with their back catalog. They showed off the hypnotic track Control and the album’s first single Automatic Systematic Habit with its rhythmic mantra “I won’t be your dirty little secret.”

A new song Battle in Me and the classic Vow – the band’s earliest released track – capped off a fantastic show. They absolutely brought down the house for a massive 90-minute set that completely fulfilled fan expectations after a long hiatus.

Garbage Setlist
Supervixen
Temptation Waits
Shut Your Mouth
Queer
Metal Heart
Stupid Girl
Why Do You Love Me
Control
#1 Crush
Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)
Blood for Poppies
Special
Milk
Automatic Systematic Habit
I Think I’m Paranoid
Bad Boyfriend
Only Happy When It Rains
Push It
Encore
Battle In Me
The Trick is to Keep Breathing
Vow

You might think Dezrah the Strange, a magician, a strange opening act choice for Garbage. Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson describes their fans as “left of center” and in that view, Dezrah probably fits.

Recruited to open the Boston show (he’s a local act) Dezrah the Strange brought along his assistant Malice in Wonderland and performed a thirty minute bag of tricks that was uncomfortable from the first moment he stepped on stage to the last second. Some of it was decidedly not his fault and some of it, I think, was a case of poor planning. To the former, Dezrah’s first audience participant was a loudmouth, obnoxious gay man who offended even other gay men in the audience with embarrassingly explicit innuendo offered at shrieking volume through the mic. When Dezrah offered him a playing card, he stuffed it down his pants. Actually, that’s pretty much all you need to know about the first five minutes of the act.

After that introduction, Dezrah never really established a rapport with the audience. No amount of hammering a nail through his nose, or breaking a concrete slab on his chest while laying on a bed of nails could make the show more interesting. His best trick was to swallow twenty needles and then a piece of string only to pull them out of his mouth all tied together. The rest was nonsense and white noise. The other problem with the show may not have entirely apparent when he agreed to play at Paradise. The two biggest rah-rah stunts were performed on the ground. Even though the stage itself was elevated, Dezrah and Malice were so low to the ground that most of the audience couldn’t see them through the thick crowd of heads and bodies closest to the stage. Without any visual reference to what was happening on stage, it amounted to basically large chunks of time standing around looking anywhere else. By the time Dezrah correctly guessed the man’s card (he saved it for his finale) most of us were ready for him to disappear. That, at least, was something he performed skillfully.

I never thought I would review a magician on this website but there you go. Life is strange.

[Portland, OR] I didn’t want to like this guy because he had a stereotypical tall hat on – very Portland. And because he sounded like Tom Waits, whom I really really dislike. And because he passed out a card proclaiming himself as a steampunk Professor Gall: alternative just like all the other alternative kids. But I liked him in the end. He demonstrated why average singer/songwriters are so mind-numbingly boring. His voice was dynamic and interesting, as was his music. He played a guitar and stomped on a mic’ed box. His lyrics were also smart and interesting. He confirmed the winning of the crowd by leaping on the bar and stalking back and forth for his last song – I felt sort of sorry for him that he felt he had to work that hard to grab the interest of the people. Interestingly, the guy next to us at the bar was a friend of his from many years back – they’d roomed together in Portland but bar guy now lived in Denver. They were metalheads back then

[Portland, OR] We only saw his very last song but we enjoyed him very much. The list of people he has played with is impressive. He is emphatic about not being a one-man band but kind of is, though not in the cheesy way. He reminds me of Nick Cave. He’s gothic folk, maybe punk. One review described him as scary but I liked him right off – with his dark sarcastic air.

I wanted to like this band because they had technical expertise, but they were just sort of bland and clean after the raunchy blues of the band before them. They were closer to speed metal than sludge metal, though they certainly weren’t speed metal. They kind of reminded me of Queens of the Stone Age, whom I feel the same about.

[Abilene, KS] This band was fantastic, outside of the growl vocals. The guys were absolute stoner metalheads, masked in their hair. The music was special though – they managed to blend a lot of groove and blues into their hardcore-ness. They also sell some sort of hot sauce.

[Boulder, CO] This band was the closest thing to Tia Carrera (psych metal) I’d heard in so long and I was in ecstasy. A cacophony of sludge metal. They weren’t as good as Tia Carrera – less dynamic, passionate, interesting – but they have potential. This was only their second gig. The young front man (in a robe) said his main band is a prog band. Good name too.

[Denver, CO] Finally a full band. They had every instrument you’d expect in a bluegrass/jug band: banjo, dobro, accordion. Maybe six members? It was pretty standard Colorado fare, but the thing that stood out to me about them was their country leanings. They were a pretty spot on Pure Prairie League for some songs, which is a glorious thing as far as I’m concerned.

[Denver, CO] There was a second guy who joined Kyle James Hauser and he was the dull singer/songwriter Kyle had escaped being. Then a third guy came and played drums with them – ho hum. This third guy was some Brad Corrigan from a band called Dispatch, never heard of them. Once Brad started singing, though, my opinion of him changed. He was a big relief after the second guy. For some reason, he reminded me of unplugged Alice in Chains, although there was nothing alt-metal about them. I guess it was the torment. The music, incongruently, was some combination of Dave Matthews Band and Vampire Weekend.

[Denver, CO] He had an electric banjo, or at least as far as I could tell. I’d never seen such an instrument before. Despite being a lone man with a lone instrument, he somehow didn’t fall into the bland singer/songwriter category. I enjoyed him. Upon looking him up, it turns out he did a SXSW showcase this year which also confirms he’s no slouch.