Album Review - Beautiful Garbage
Steve Glassbrenner | Staff Writer

After much anticipation Garbage’s third album, "Beautiful Garbage," is out, and in retrospect we’d be much better off waiting for something of the same caliber as their first two albums. Garbage's self-titled first album was good. On a scale of 1 to 5 it gets a 4. This was clearly a group just getting fueled up to go somewhere. The music was tasteful studio wizardry and Shirley Manson only hinted at the personality of the next album.

The second album, "Version 2.0," was phenomenal, definitely a 5 out of 5. "2.0" had what every great "rock" album should have. It was hard-driven and worked twice as hard to pack twice the punch of the first album. The mixing was rumored to have taken months, the studio work was awesome, and Shirley was unleashed as the undisputable (yes I’m gonna use that horribly cliché’d word) diva.

In all fairness, "Beautiful Garbage" heads in a different direction than their last album. It's more subdued, not attempting the same pounding pace as the other albums. Still, that does not let them off the hook for such a bland, lackluster track as "Androgyny." The song about sexual ambiguity seems unable to decide what it’s doing next and just goes nowhere.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some good tracks on this disc, just don’t expect anything with near the same intensity as "Version 2.0" or you’ll be disappointed. Die hard Garbage fans will be pacified for a bit. And as a side note, the CD extra bit on the disc is loads of fun. They give you sound samples and a mixing station so you can make your own versions of four of the tracks on the disc. They even give you an internet multi-player function as well.

Overall Score: 2.5 possibly even a 3 out of 5 points

The CD extra gets a 5 out of 5!