| beautifulgarbage sounds much like all the other Garbage albums. When Garbage surfaced in 1995, they already sounded like a confident and mature band, mostly due to the credentials of the band's members: Butch Vig (drums) is one of rock's premier producers, having already worked on hit albums by Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and others, while Shirley Manson (vocals) had been performing in bands since her teens. Polished indie rock with an electronic edge, beautifulgarbage picks up where their second album (Version 2.0) ended, with a hook-laden sound that veers from the mosh pit to the dance floor, often in the same song, as crashing guitar riffs vie with synthesizers, theremins, scratching and just about all the studio toys allowed by the band's prodigious imagination, experience and budget. Shirley Manson stills vamps up her lyrics, with mixed results (didn't Blur already do "Androgyny", but better, on "Girls & Boys"?). Fortunately, there are also songs such as "Can't Cry These Tears", which admirably modernises Phil Spector's famous wall of sound and the Mazzy Star-ish "So Like a Rose", while "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go)" updates Sly Stone's "If You Want Me to Stay" by way of synth, bass and handclaps, and is easily the album's highlight. It may not be ground-breaking stuff, but beautifulgarbage is this band doing what they do best, and doing it well. Again. --Robert Burrow |
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