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Baker's Dozen

Versions 13.0: Shirley Manson's Favourite Albums
Elizabeth Aubrey , June 6th, 2018 10:19

In a satisfyingly forthright Baker's Dozen, Garbage singer Shirley Manson argues for boycotting un-gender-balanced festivals, explores Scottish sonic pride, discovering the finger-banging potential of listening to The Clash and says a life without misery is incomplete. All that plus enthusiastic recollections of music from Nick Cave, Patti Smith, The Stone Roses and more

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Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth
An incredible record that sounds as modern today as it did when it first emerged. I was really struck just by this minimalist production and the atmosphere they captured on this record. It's just been one of these records that I go back to over and over again and it's been a real touchstone in my career. I just think it's so beautiful and so tastefully constructed. Again, it's also so unique. There's nobody else who has ever touched them. 



They've made this insanely perfect record – and I rarely say that, that it is a perfect record – and I associate it with the emergence of myself as an adult where it just felt like a whole different universe than what I had experienced before. It sounded like a whole different planet. 



I don't even know how to articulate why I love it so much, other than it is a perfect recording. I guess the aesthetic of Colossal Youth is that it is so disciplined. You don't really hear that very often, that real confidence just to let things be really simple and unembellished: it takes a lot of balls to do that [laughs]. I feel too that any new generation that was exposed to that record would find it as thrilling as I did back in the 1980s; you can't really say that about too many records.