Disco de Garbage: “Absolute Garbage [PA]”

"Absolute Garbage" is Garbage's greatest hits disc. This special edition adds a CD of remixes.

The first disc is a spectacular, single-disc summary of this extraordinary band. Nobody sounds like Garbage. You know a Garbage song the instant you hear it.

First, there's the amazing Miss Manson. She joins a very small club of female rock singers that rise effortlessly above their peers...we're talking Chrissie Hynde...and then that's pretty much it. She's that good.

The rest of the band are no less tremendous. MAN can they make a lot of glorious noise! So many of these songs have irresistible hooks, earth-shaking sonics, walls of guitars and synths...drums that come from, oh, I dunno, magma? They come from nowhere...from somewhere below...and then explode with a fierce inevitability. Check out the fireworks on "Rains" or "Push It" or even "When I Grow Up."

Layer on that these anthemic choruses and terrific melodies, and you have some of the best rock music of the last decade.

The disc does a good job summarizing their four albums, and as any true fan, I have my quibbles over song selection. But they are just that: quibbles. Of a fan. Of a particularly fussy fan.

The remixes are superfluous. Worse that that, they're just bad. Now don't get me wrong: I love remixes. They can make a good song more interesting, longer for added enjoyment, or they can present an overly familiar song in a fresh manner so you can like it all over again.

Yeah, well, none of that sort of stuff happens here.

For me, the second disc could have been a live disc, or more songs, like "Supervixen" or "Androgyny". Or the DVD of the videos. Which I also bought.

But as it stands, that one disc is pretty darn awesome. You cannot lose with songs like "Only Happy When It Rains" (how wonderful would it have been to have, say, the Hynde/Manson duet version from VH1 here?), "Stupid Girl", "Special", "Cherry Lips", "Bleed Like Me"...

I really hope they're not broken up for good. In this era of disposable pop, there simply isn't enough of this good stuff to go around.

I'm 55 y-o, and have been actively listening (for 35 years) to after-1963 rock from Abba to The Who and every letter group in between (and some new alternative stuff). The two Garbage albums that I mentioned above are one of the few super-groups albums I've ever heard, which, by-the-way contain 90% excellent songs each. I myself would give the albums (and their shippers) a SIX-star rating if possible

Garbage is my favorite band. Shirley Manson is the only celebrity I want to meet before I die. I can't express how highly I revere this group.

Absolute Garbage (2007) is a fitting "greatest hits" collection. It does NOT include every single the band ever released, only the most popular ones. And although we can all gripe about its omissions, the fact remains that what we're left with is a fine, comprehensive-enough album that presents an exciting retrospective of Garbage at their rise, peak, and fall (in surprisingly chronological fashion).

The first 5 songs are from their eponymous debut (1995) and of them, "Queer" and "Only Happy When It Rains" are the truly great cuts. "Vow" and "Milk" are good while "Stupid Girl" remains average and the weakest pick from their first CD (although it was a huge hit).

Tracks 7 - 11 hail from Version 2.0 (1998) and I would call all of them terrific, except "When I Grow Up", which is good but not great. "Push It", in particular, is almost the best song Garbage ever produced (my personal favorite would have to be "So Like A Rose" from beautifulgarbage).

"Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)" and "Shut Your Mouth", both from the third album beautifulgarbage (2001), are two of the best selections from that release, which was filled with dizzying highs and terrifying lows.

Although "Why Do You Love Me" was the first (and best) single from Bleed Like Me (2005), that album's title track was one of the worst songs Garbage has ever made (though admittedly "Bleed Like Me" is a love it/hate it affair). The remix of "It's All Over But The Crying", a middling ballad that almost became a single, is a little more downbeat and snappier but mostly it's not much of a deviation from the original.

Fortunately there are three other tracks (all of them great) scattered throughout that deserve special attention:

#1 Crush is so brilliantly twisted that you can either issue a restraining order or take it as a darkly comedic retelling of Romeo + Juliet (the soundtrack this came from). Underneath a canopy of pulsating drums, Shirley drones on with creepy pledges like, "I will lie for you/beg and steal for you/I will crawl on hands and knees until you see/you're just like me". "#1 Crush" is the kind of obsessively lovelorn stalker who rummages through your trash and keeps a blow-up doll with the same color hair as yours in their closet.

"When we first got together, we all said that we wanted to make a James Bond Theme, because that's how we come up with our songs." - Garbage, The World Is Not Enough Ultimate Edition DVD

The World Is Not Enough represents Garbage at their swankiest, naturally evolving from the brisk, posh sonance of Version 2.0 to a Bond theme that melds `90s techno fiendishness with `60s orchestral flourish. It's a riveting achievement, showcasing melodramatic radiance ("There's no point in living if you can't feel alive") and insatiable craving ("If we can't have it all then nobody will"). Shirley's expansive delivery is pitch-perfect and she's arguably never sounded stronger. Too bad it was attached to one of the worst Bond movies.

If Tell Me Where It Hurts is Garbage's fond goodbye, then I couldn't think of anything more appropriate. Shirley finally finds the right man ("To hell with everybody else/all I care about is you/and that's the truth/they don't like me yeah I can tell/but you do") and we applaud her wholeheartedly. Steve, Duke and Butch paint the sumptuous music with shades of nostalgia in a sincere salute to their fans. "Tell Me Where It Hurts" catches our gorgeous firecracker reflecting ("I've been loved but I didn't know how to feel it/and I've been adored but I don't know if I ever believed it") and its exquisite lyrics culminate with a grateful payoff that was worth the wait ("I've been loved my whole life but I didn't know how to take it/until you").

This is a magnificent offering that can be enjoyed by hardcore fans and newcomers alike. If you've barely (or never) heard of Garbage or, like me, have bought BOTH versions of Absolute Garbage just to complete your collection, there's no reason not to check out this disc. In a word, it's amazing.

(P.S. Check out my reviews of Garbage's other four albums for a song-by-song dissection.)

I love this CD. It's the best ever. There are angry, happy, sad, and romantic reflective songs. The group is at their best on this CD. I would highly recommend it to anyone. I play it in my car nonstop for months on end. I LOVE it!

Whenever an artist brings out a retrospective, longtime fans are destined to make complaints. But it needs casual fans in mind and the general consensus and the public's familiarity is mostly in the group's first two records. I don't disagree that the later work was great, but as far as the music that's inside here it's definitely five-star material.

For die hards, "#1 Crush" and "The World Is Not Enough," some excellent singles, are available on a Garbage album for the first time. Also, there's a completely new track on here called "Tell Me Where It Hurts" which is excellent, recommended to fans of the new-wave-y tracks.

The production here updates things from the cassette-quality production of the shoegaze-style debut album. There's 18 tracks and none of 'em are bad ones, not even just "merely good" ones. It's in chronologic order which is a plus for me. Most of the U.S. singles are included here, except the Beautiful Garbage ones. I too would have liked "Androgyny" and it seemed like on a local radio station that "Breaking Up the Girl" was a pretty well sized hit, but I guess with Shirley's dis-approval of the latter track and to include things on just one disc they decided to put in favor the bouncy "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)" and the mostly spoken techno rock standard "Shut Your Mouth."

The remix disc is a nice bonus and does not make a much higher price than the single disc version. Some of it is not interesting and I'm generally not a big remix fan but it can be an entertaining listen and is a nice bonus to the collection. About my only complaint is a re-recorded "It's All Over But the Crying," which was fine enough as it was seems like they just put louder percussion to make it more streamlined or something.

If you're new to Garbage, this is a perfect start. And going from there, there's only four albums so it's not like you're putting much of a budget to throw on these CD's.