Garbage delivers familiar sound

You’ve got to give Garbage credit just for fortitude; as their grunge music brethren fade into nostalgia and VH1 retrospectives, these guys keep plugging away at their guitars and synthesizers and singing about love, relationships and break-ups. Bleed Like Me is only their fourth album in a decade, but they’re already starting to sound like alternative rock veterans, releasing some of their trademark sound into today’s vastly changed musical terrain.

Such a stance yields mixed results. Bleed Like Me is back-to-the-roots Garbage, or at least a step away from the vague teen pop of 2001’s Beautiful Garbage. Guitar-driven and just plain driven, it sounds like the album they should have made in 1995. But Garbage’s sound hasn’t aged terribly well, and they come off stale and miscast next to the biggest bands of the day. “Fitting in” is not a top priority for too many musicians, but it is for Garbage, and it’s something they’ve been able to do pretty well until now.

Musically, Bleed Like Me is far from disastrous, but it’s hard to pick out individual shining moments because the album as a whole is so consistent. Things get off to a lame start with the Liz Phair-esque “Bad Boyfriend,” but they pick up considerably with the disc’s only real highlight: “Run Baby Run,” a great pop number with delightfully simple guitars and a dance-y drumbeat. From there, the album doesn’t hit any more peaks when it should; all of the songs try to make an impression, but they adhere so much to tired alt-rock clichés that most of those attempts come up short.

Garbage have never produced a truly bad album, and it’s unlikely that they ever will; they’ve got the Europop-meets-grunge sound nailed to a tee. But it’s nearly impossible to speak of Garbage without mentioning their place in pop culture, which has taken a downturn since “Special” and “I Think I’m Paranoid” from 1998’s Version 2.0. Everything about Garbage—the slick yet edgy music, the bad-girl image, the worldwide distribution—begs for fame and widespread appeal, but they’re still treading the water of their own music from years ago, which pushes them backward. I’ll eat my weight in garbanzos if they’re ever again embraced by the mainstream listening public the way they were prior to 2000, in which case they may as well pack up their belongings and go home.

Yes, Garbage are officially over the hill, and that means Bleed Like Me will resonate most with old fans reliving the halcyon days of post-grunge in the mid to late ’90s. Yet this seems to be missing their entire point; with brashness, by-the-numbers pop songwriting and a tablespoon of gloss, this album screams “Pay attention to me” completely in vain. Artistically it’s passable, if not particularly unique. When all is said and done, however, it’s a not a question of artistry but of logic: How much does the world need Garbage, and how much more Garbage do you really need?

—Mike Newmark, Assistant A&E Editor