Garbage's third album of garage-rocktronica, beautifulgarbage, recorded at the band's studio in Madison, Wisconsin, is perhaps the most emotionally intense album of the year so far, and certainly the only one capable of recalling Destiny's Child and David Bowie in the space of a single track.

Lead singer Shirley Manson - who started therapy after the band came off its last tour in 1999, and who has always been one of rock's most underrated lyricists as well as one of its most forthright interview subjects - is at a cathartic high on beautifulgarbage, spewing both venom and vulnerability at herself and others in equal measure. "I feel I owe it to myself and others to rage constantly," she says. "But for my own self-preservation, I sometimes have to not rage 100 percent."

I understand that you tried yoga and didn't care for it.

I absolutely hated it. It drove me insane. I spoke about it with Courtney Love, because she had been going on about the wonderful benefits of yoga, and I scoffed at her, because I hated it. It made me angry. And she in turn scoffed at me and said, "Well, where the hell did you practice your yoga - Madison, Wisconsin?" So I scoffed at her in turn, "Well, we can't all practice in L.A.!" But I do think that perhaps I just went to the wrong type of yoga. Because they literally, quite literally, hung us from the roof by our British fannies. And I don't mean American fannies, I mean British fannies.

Huh? Do you mean "fanny" as we mean "pussy"?

Yeah. Our pudenda. And it was highly unpleasant. There was nothing relaxing about it whatsoever. I was so angry, I fainted for the first time ever in my life.

Who do you think are the true talents working today in music?

Well, there's the obvious: PJ Harvey, BjÖrk, Missy Elliott, OutKast. Fiona Apple - I think her voice is one of the greatest of the last decade, an incredible voice that sounds as old as the grave.

And the false talents?

I think falsity in itself has become almost as worthy as authenticity. Britney Spears has become revoltingly fake to such a degree that I kind of accept it now and see it in a pop-art sense. She's so gloriously naive, a cartoon. And 'NSync have become Andy Warhol's tomato-soup can. And I can buy into why people dig it. It's not my thing, but I think it's just as relevant in our culture as everybody mooing and cooing over Kid A.

You can make distinctions of quality within the falsity genre, though.

Yeah. But I better watch what I say, because Christina Aguilera's management has already threatened to take me to court because of supposedly unpleasant thingsI said about Christina in my Web diary. So I have to not make a further comment on Miss Aguilera.

You're now thirty-six. . . .

I'm thirty-five. I turned thirty-five yesterday. . . . It was weird, because a lot of people have been saying to me, "Oooh, you can't be happy about it." And I was like,"You know what? I am happy about it." I went off on this rant about why are people so ashamed of getting older, and this is a triumph for me - I made it to thirty-five. And literally, about ten minutes after my rant, we got news of Aaliyah's airplane crash. It was like, I fucking rest my case. It was a very poignant piece of news to receive on what people considered to be a so-called difficult birthday for me.

OK. I feel that we have kind of missed out on the part of the interview where you typically discuss penis size, and things of that nature.

I'm done talking about penis size. That's a rule of thumb for the promotion of this record. I've bored myself even with the penis talk, and that's saying something.

You should always be careful with I'm-done-with declarations, though.

Au contraire. I have to disagree with you there. I feel that I can make statements for the moment I'm in, and then totally do a 180-degree turn if I wish, as I did with therapy. I ranted and raved against therapy just two years ago, and now, of course, I literally feel like going on a march through Washington, D.C., or London or Paris with my everyone should have their head shrunk banner.

Nevertheless, the bottom line is still: no penis-size discussion. And I feel aficionados of Shirley Manson interviews expect it.

Well, fuck 'em. I aim to disappoint.

-MIM UDOVITCH
(RS879-Oct.11, 2001)