The title? Makes me wonder if someone in the band has been reading Japanese light novels lately, going by sheer length alone. The music? Very, very solid, the product of a band doing what they want to be doing in this moment to the best of their ability.

I bounced off of most of the previous full Garbage album, No Gods No Masters, so I went into Let All That We Imagine Be The Light with considerable trepidation. Not many of my most recent new music purchases have panned out terribly well. (Note the lack of reviews here since, oh, 2023…) For instance: The less said about Apocalyptica’s recent attempt to return to the well bearing the sign “Metallica songs to cover,” the better.

If you’ve ever liked a Garbage album then I have an easy time recommending this one to you. It’s ten songs of varying but mostly average length with dense, almost crunchy at times, production values and Shirley Manson in what could best be described as “having run out of fucks to give but not to say” mode.

Seriously, if f-bombs are going to bother you, this may not be the best music purchase option.

Every song on here is at least good, and a few are marvelous. The high point for me is “Radical,” which also happens to serve as the title track (after a fashion). I considered it just-okay on first listen, bumped it up to pretty-good a couple of listens later, and at this point (a week after initial purchase) I’ve locked in a 5-star rating and I don’t see that going anywhere any time soon, given that parts of it have been in the earworm rotation of my psyche for days now.

With that said… not that I know anything about what satisfies pop sensibilities nowadays but I don’t see anything on the album becoming wildly popular outside of the band’s existing fanbase. There are no “club hits” hiding in the track list, there are no barn-burners or simple anthems for folks to nod & sing along with. This is meaty & meaningful stuff that you’ve kinda gotta be in the mood for going in.

Still, it’s a pretty damned good record overall, and I’m glad to have it in the library.

I suppose I should say a few words about the other new record I picked up last week:

Filter’s The Algorithm has a few songs I mostly like (and even “For The Beaten” almost loses me in places) but overall is not my cuppa tea. That’s not to say it’s bad, just not-for-me, not an overall style I like. A bigger fan of the band than I am would probably like it just fine, as it is definitely more-of-that.

To be fair, nearly every Filter album I’ve heard (other than the nearly-flawless Title Of Record) is like this for me, where I end up with two or three songs in rotation and a whole bunch of “nope, don’t want none of that” tracks. So take this with the grain of salt it probably deserves.

Did you know that the Double D boys released a new album a couple weeks ago? I sure didn’t! Luckily, a coworker mentioned it in passing yesterday. That was probably the best part of my entire day, if I’m honest.

So, how is it? Hmm.

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