On first listen, I'm cautiously optimistic this album will be a nostalgic trip for me. Garbage appeared when I was in middle school, and the blend of crunchy alternative rock featured in the leading track "Supervixen" was popular in the circles I hung with. It's also possible that it will stir up horrible repressed memories- I mean, who isn't honestly embarrassed by their middle-school self? There's also a good chance I won't recognize any of the songs contained within. I was probably too busy during 1995 celebrating the 20th anniversary of Physical Graffiti. Not really, but holy shit... I was closer to the release of Physical Graffiti then than I am to then now. I'm so old.
Garbage uses a mix of grungy hard-rock and digital-pop music and winds up with a mix that would fit in pretty well in a steam-punk Matrix movie. The sounds are very sharp and distorted, and the themes severe yet melancholy. While Garbage appears to be a capable guitar & drums band they make heavy use of samples, sound effects, and drum loops. Despite all of that the songs are all very similar in sound.
Still, something interesting happened during my listen completely by accident. I paused about halfway through "Vow" to take a phone call, and when I came back to the song a half hour later it felt way less severe and angry. I think the dark energy of the first few songs echoed around in my brain a bit polluting the songs like "Vow" that had more of a fun poppy energy to them. Maybe I was forcing myself to take Garbage way more seriously than it was intended. It's the grunginess that does that. It fills my heads with thoughts of angst and brooding teens that are tough to shake.
I'm not impressed with some elements of Garbage, particularly their love of samples. But the music isn't so bad and rocks pretty hard. 3 stars.
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