SPIN is streaming Garbage’s new album, Not Your Kind of People, (*US only) and I just gave it my first listen**. I had heard a handful of the album tracks live at the 3 shows I attended last month, but had not downloaded any album leaks. I didn’t really want my first listen of the album to be in super low quality, but I compared the iTunes version of the album opener, Automatic Systematic Habit, to the SPIN stream and found the stream quality to be acceptable enough (but not great), so I forged on.
Now that I’ve teased you with that long introduction, I’m not going to post a full album review. For that, I’ll wait until I’ve heard the entire album in CD quality, but I do want to share my first impressions of the closing track of the standard edition, Beloved Freak, as this is the track that provoked the strongest response.
Garbage have a history of producing especially strong, yet dark, album closers, often with endings that slowly fade into the distance: Milk, You Look So Fine, So Like a Rose and Happy Home, in order of album release. Beloved Freak continues in that same tradition, but there’s an optimism in Beloved Freak that we haven’t seen in the other closers.
Beloved Freak is a beautiful lullabye, beginning with a slow piano part and some atmospheric layers. The lyrics are very simple and to the point with it’s a message to Garbage’s kind of people…the teased and the bullied; the outcasts, misfits, and freaks; to anyone who’s ever felt lost, alone or misunderstood, “You’re not alone.”
The song really struck a nerve for me tonight. I sat on my couch, listening through my good headphones, laptop on my lap, teary eyed while playing Beloved Freak about 10 times. My mind drifted back to all the times when I sat alone in my room when I was in high school. Though I was always well liked, I still often felt a bit off or forgotten because I traveled between different various groups of people (mostly the smart kids, the jocks and the orchestra kids)…never completely fitting into any of them. It’s like Garbage were right there with me. So here I stand, beloved freak.
I believe these lyrics are (mostly) correct:
You’re not certain when you feel
Hurt, get violent when you deal
With how the world drags you along
You’re not alone
And nothing good was ever free
No one gets it, no one sees
So here you stand, beloved freak
You’re not alone
You’re not alone
You’re not alone
Sometimes we get so tired and weak
Lose the sky beneath our feet
You’re not alone
Every comet throws an arc
And scars our vision ‘cross the dark
And when we’re gone, we will remain
You’re not alone
People lie and people steal
They misinterpret how you feel
And so we doubt and we conceal
You’re not alone
Don’t worry for me
Just think of yourself, think of yourself
Don’t worry for me
Just think of yourself, think of yourself
When we’re gone, we will remain
When we’re gone, we will remain
When we’re gone, we will remain
When we’re gone, we will remain
So here you stand, beloved freak
The world is at your feet
Here you stand, beloved freak
The world is at your feet
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
And so you stand, beloved freak
The world’s lying at your feet
There you stand, beloved freak
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
*If you’re outside the US, the band has posted a list of album streams across the globe.
**Note: Most of this post was written during my first listen of the album earlier this week, but I finished it a few days later.
