Garbage‘s anticipated new album, Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, is out May 30 (pre-order it on orange vinyl) and they’ve just shared the electro-fueled first single, “There’s No Future in Optimism,” which is also the record’s opening song.
“I love the title,” says Shirley Manson. “The band sent it me and I was like, ‘This is great. I’m keeping that.’ But the lyrics are an action against that title. Because if we allow our fatalism or our negativity to really take over, we will crumble. It’s about a city, in my case, Los Angeles, but it could be anywhere where bad stuff is happening. After the George Floyd murder, which is one of few things in my life that I wish I’d never seen: I was changed entirely by seeing the footage of that cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck. In Los Angeles there were huge protests and a lot of upheaval after that. Above our house in Hollywood, there were helicopters all day long, for days on end. It was really precarious, chaotic and terrifying.”
You can watch the video, directed by Benjy Kirkman, below.
Garbage will be on tour with Starcrawler this fall, and they play NYC on September 20 at Brooklyn Paramount. All dates are listed below.
GARBAGE – THE HAPPY ENDINGS TOUR 2025
September 3—Orlando, FL—Hard Rock Café
September 5—Pompano Beach, FL—Pompano Beach Amphitheatre
September 6—St Petersburg, FL—Jannus Live
September 8—Atlanta, GA—The Eastern
September 10—Nashville, TN—The Pinnacle
September 12—Cleveland, OH—Agora Theatre
September 13—Detroit, MI—Masonic Cathedral Theatre
September 16—Philadelphia, PA—Franklin Music Hall
September 17—Washington, DC—The Anthem
September 18—Boston, MA—Roadrunner
September 20—Brooklyn, NY—Brooklyn Paramount
September 23—Pittsburgh, PA—Stage AE
September 24—Toronto, ON—History
September 29—Chicago, IL—The Salt Shed
September 30—Newport, KY—MegaCorp Pavilion
October 1—Columbus, OH—KEMBA Live!
October 3—Madison, WI—The Sylvee
October 4—Minneapolis, MN—First Avenue
October 6—Kansas City, MO—Midland Theatre
October 7—Dallas, TX—The Bomb Factory
October 12—Denver, CO—The Mission Ballroom
October 15—Seattle, WA—Paramount Theatre
October 18—Spokane, WA—Knitting Factory Spokane
October 20—Vancouver, BC—Orpheum
October 21—Portland, OR—McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
October 23—Saratoga, CA—The Mountain Winery
October 24—San Francisco, CA—The Warfield
October 26—Reno, NV—Silver Legacy Resort Casino
October 29—Salt Lake City, UT—Rockwell at The Complex
October 31—Las Vegas, NV—The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas – The Chelsea
November 2—Phoenix, AZ—The Van Buren