Tues. March 26  

    Garbage in (1994). Garbage out (2005).  And, surprisingly, Garbage in again (2012-2013). The band has a strong new album, “Not Your Kind of People,” and a club tour that includes a show at the House of Blues Tuesday March 26. Sure, the alt-rock quartet – three musicians-friends from Wisconsin fronted by Shirley Manson a red-headed singer from Scotland – had big hits like “Stupid Girl” and “Only Happy When It Rains” in the mid-1990s.

     But neither a well-received new album, after a long layoff, or a bunch of sold-out shows was a lock.     “It’s been amazing,” said guitarist Steve Marker, on the phone from Washington, D.C.  “When we made the record, we didn’t really know if anyone was going to care or if they would come out and see us. The crowds are going nuts and we feel really lucky. I don’t know how we pulled this number in the lottery, but it’s fantastic.”

     Garbage has long mashed up styles – grunge, electronica, shoegaze, hard rock – and burnished them with shiny pop melodies and dark-tinged lyrics. “We never really were one thing and never felt like we fit in with any sort of scene,” Marker said. “We came out towards the end of grunge. We weren’t ever dance-y enough for the electronica people. And people dissed Shirley ‘cause they thought she was kind of a stand-in or something.” (Drummer and ace producer Butch Vig - Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth - brought Manson in to audition after he saw her sing with her group, Angelfish, on MTV.) They sold 13 million albums over the years, but tensions inside and outside the group forced them to the sidelines after an 11-year run.

     “We weren’t supportive of one another,” Marker said, of an endless tour-and-record cycle that wore them down.  “There was a lot of negativity around us in ‘05, a lot of it coming from us ending up on giant records labels we hadn’t signed to in the first place [Interscope and Geffen].  But we got pulled to ‘em and then we were competing with Lady Gaga, or whoever it was at the time. We were second class citizens who got treated badly. We weren’t able to do what we wanted to do and were asked to do a bunch of stuff we didn’t want to do. We’re avoiding all that now.”

    Marker, 54, knows Garbage’s hiatus was an eternity in pop music terms. “But,” he said, “it ended up serving us well because we feel rejuvenated again, like we were when we made our first album.” The songwriting is shared by all band members, Vig, guitarists Marker and Duke Erikson, and Manson. The singer has final say on lyrics, but all contribute. (Bassist Eric Avery, formerly of Jane’s Addiction, is their touring fifth member.)

     When Garbage reconvened, Marker said, “It was totally without plan or direction at first. Because we didn’t even know if we’d get along. You go that long without working with someone, you don’t know if it’s gonna suck or not. Luckily it didn’t suck. But if one of the four of us could have said, ‘You know what, I’m not into this,’ that would have been it.” The new disc continues Garbage’s mix of hooky pop and noise, traditional rock instrumentation and loops, with Manson providing sultry or declamatory vocals.

    “It doesn’t feel radically different,” Marker said, “and that was something we came to terms with early on in the recording. There really wasn’t a need for us to ‘keep up’ with what’s at the cutting edge today. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel. We’re not gonna go dubstep on you. We listen, obviously, to what’s going on, but we accept the fact that what we do sounds like it does because of the four people involved and the chemistry there. Let’s embrace that and not fight it.”

    Asked to pinpoint where Garbage’s music comes from today, Marker responded, “It’s hopeful. I think. We are accused a little bit of being gloomy and there is that, too. There’s a whole spectrum of ways that we feel. That’s life. But this album ended up being about hope for the fans and people who would write to us when we weren’t working and express what we meant to them. It was really touching. We felt like we serve a purpose for some people and that’s a rare thing in life. You kind of have to honor that.”

IOEcho opens at 8. Tix: $45-$39.

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