Garbage
Garbage

I love how this album is stretching towards something it couldn't quite achieve. These beautiful, dramatic songs, full of melancholy, angst and rage, each have a distinct emotive voice - but even with every trick thhey threw at it in production, the late grunge era guitars, bass and drums are foregrounded and bury the rest of it, making it hard to differentiate between tracks if you focus on anything but Shirley's voice. When the other instrumental elements do break through, it's sublime. You can see why they were moved to lean into digital production in 2.0, trying to channel that energy to the foreground. Even failing to hit its target, it remains an all time great.

4