This one's just Garbage

Lead singer Shirley Manson was this close to being the next Kylie Minogue. A literate, “la, la”-less version of Minogue at least.

On Garbage’s last LP beautifulgarbage, she sang cheekily in her lilting Scottish brogue about adolescent angst over some of the best electronic riffs constructed to date. Garbage has always been impossibly clever, producing songs about feminism, conformity and androgyny, and yet this last release, despite the band’s innovative use of obscure influences such as The Ronettes and trip-hop, was an international flop.

Bleed Like Me, their latest release, could be seen as a reaction to Garbage’s decreasing popularity. It’s the band’s last-ditch effort to recapture their title as the reigning masters of gloom-pop while the clock’s ticking, the band’s breaking up, the fickle Brit-pop scene’s changing once more, and Manson’s status as a sex symbol is shakier than ever.

This album is a return to form of sorts. Basically, it sounds as if Garbage has thrown away the last 10 years of the group’s development and delivered a carbon-copy of their eponymous and enormously successful debut—albeit with a few things missing. For a band that relies on the traditional power-pop structure, the hooks-to-songs ratio is surprisingly low. Indeed, for the first time in their history, the album is a subdued affair as most of the songs flit by with none of the group’s signature sonic punch.

With strum-heavy, sound-alike guitars replacing the band’s trademark electronic blips, it sounds as if Garbage is stuck in 1992, which makes sense considering that Butch Vig produced some of that period’s seminal bands, including Nirvana, Sonic Youth and The Smashing Pumpkins.

And while Vig’s production skills are still thriving and Manson’s vocals are still feral, there’s something entirely lacking here.

It’s a dead album from a group with no creative life left.