Duke confirms work on album

Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson recently revealed in her native Scotland that the mostly Madison-based band is recording a new record after a five-year hiatus.
The rest of the band is leery of talking about it, but guitarist Duke Erikson confirmed the news Thursday.
“It’s true that we’re recording,” Erikson said. “We’re working on some new music. It’s too early to say where it’s going to go.”
The band has recorded a handful of new songs and plans to go back to the studio in Los Angeles next week, he added.
“I don’t want to make too big a deal of it. It could all go south tomorrow,” Erikson said.
In 2005, Manson said that the band was taking an extended break after a world tour supporting the band’s fourth album, “Bleed Like Me,” but stopped short of calling it a breakup.
“Garbage never officially broke up contrary to what people have heard,” Erikson said. “We just went our separate ways for a little bit.”
Erikson said he’s not sure where the new material is going to lead, but added, “We’re writing some pretty good stuff and we’re enjoying doing it. It’s all we really set out to do for now.”
The new record doesn’t have a name yet. The band is simply feeling its way through writing together again and is enjoying having no deadline and no pressure, Erikson said.
Since 2005, Garbage has released just three new songs -– one single and two B-sides –- plus a 2007 greatest hits album, “Absolute Garbage.”
Manson had planned to put out a solo album, until she was cast in the now-canceled Fox TV show “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” the highest-rated new scripted series of the 2007-08 television season.
Then last March she wrote a Facebook post: “Guess who I just spent a week in the studio with? Would you be pleased if I said one of them was called Steve and one of them was called Duke and another was a Grammy-winning producer?”
She was referring to guitarist Steve Marker, who now lives in Colorado with his family; and Butch Vig, the band’s drummer and a major music producer, who is currently working on a project with the Foo Fighters.
The Scottish-born Manson finally announced Garbage’s return during a lecture at the University of the West of Scotland, according to the Guardian’s website this week.
“I’m working on a record right now with the band,” she said. “We’ve recorded quite a lot but it’s difficult to quantify. We’re just winging it right now … I took about five years off. I’d like to do some touring next year.”

Taken from Winsconsin State Journal