Version 2.0

I always found echo Elly to be a more interesting version of garbage

It was an alright album. I would visit it again although no one song stood out in particular

I like Garbage overall. The songs are good and I like her voice, but I'm not the biggest fan of the way its mixed. I don't really have the words to describe what I mean, but the instruments all sound sort of mushed together. 3 stars.

I know there was another Garbage album on the original list, and at the time I was surprised that it was on it and this album was not, as this was the only thing I was familiar with when it came to Garbage. Well turns out neither of them were albums that I needed to listen to. Very much has that strange blend of alt-rock, dance-rock, industrial, power pop that only the mid 90s could produce. Pretty tame and boring background music. This was fine I guess, just really, and squarely not for me.

There's already enough garbage on the original list.

I get it, Garbage is a big deal in certain circles, and it doesn't hurt that the lead singer is nice to look at. Brit pop either runs hot or cold for me, and this one is cold. Not in the realm of Radiohead, but definitely not something I really enjoyed either.

Repeating a once-smashing, groundbreaking formula (here summed up as big-beat electronica + grunge guitars + pop melodies + teenage angst) is not always conducive to full artistic success the second time around. As far as this listener is concerned, most of the music in the second Garbage album lacks the tension or infectious intents that made the legendary bangers found in their debut so memorable for me. I may have an interest for the styles explored by the nineties British-American act in *Version 2.0*, but I honestly consider that the latter pales in comparison to *Garbage*, plain and simple. This underwhelming nature is all the more frustrating given the fact that Shirley Manson, Butch Vig and their colleagues try so hard to dig the exact same vein that made them sound like a fully-formed act from the get-go. Unfortunately, the results on this second LP often fail to come off as elegant or convincing enough in the long run. Style over substance is the sin I see here. Case in point: the opener "Temptation Waits", where the guitar tones sound incredibly weak compared to its obvious (extraordinary) model "Vow" on the first album. This is not a passing flaw within the album by the way. Most of the songs on the first side of the record indeed appear as vaguely defined derivations from tracks on the previous LP. "I Think I'm Paranoid" is a three-legged clone of "Only Happy When It Rains" for instance, up to its vocal lines and the contents of its lyrics. Cloning technology was the talk of the day during the nineties, was it not? Yet such tech was far from being perfected back then... Too many times, *Version 2.0* therefore sounds like a lab reenactment that turned sour -- enough to make an illusion on the charts when the thing was released, but not enough to make it stand the test of time. Subjective opinion, of course, but negative reviews must always take a chance and pretend to objectivity to get their point across. Hope I'm not ruffling too many feathers here, to take an image that's fitting to Garbage's artistry (see the first album's cover). Worse, some of the vocal hooks and choruses on the album's first half (specifically on "When I Grow Up" and "Special") are so cloying, they actually sound like fodder for annoying ad jingles, instead of material that could be used for truly likable songs. And I dare anyone here to praise or defend the processed jungle clichés of "Hammering In My Head", a cut which aged like milk, period. Embarrassing to close the first side of your LP with such a dud. Interestingly, the second side fares far better than the first, thanks to a string of four cuts that finally sees the four accomplished musicians in the band flex their songwriting muscles at last. "Push It" finally equals the hits of the debut. "The Trick Is To Keep Breathing" is a sensitive ballad akin to "A Stroke Of Luck". "Dumb" and "Sleep Together" explore minor chords-driven industrial-pop turf tense enough to justify a visit. But then Garbage inexplicably ruins that good run with a very awkward cut ("Wicked Ways", yet another dud). And to close the proceedings, you have "You Look So Fine", quite a nice ballad as well... but basically "Milk 2.0", up to its synth line! And by that late stage, such a formulaic intent to create a connective tissue with the first LP feels almost infuriating, like an avowal of creative defeat... For me, the second best album in Garbage's discography will always be *Strange Little Birds*, which was released in the quite late year of 2016. "Night Drive Loneliness", "Even Though Our Love Is Doomed" and "Magnetized" is an extraordinary run of back-to-back songs in it, for example. The first is a hypnotic, film noir-inspired gem, the second is simply put the *best ballad the band has ever written*, incredibly potent and cinematic, and the third is as powerful, dark and propulsive as anything Manson and co. have ever released when they originally broke out. Of course, *Strange Little Birds* was mostly ignored or misunderstood by "professional critics" when it came out. The hype was long gone by then, you see... Here's me hoping for a reevaluation of that one, though (is the user suggesting *Version 2.0* for this generator familiar with that other record, by the way?). I can't help adding that subsequent LPs released by the band since 2016 have been slightly more favored by said critics compared to *Strange Little Birds*, but that I don't care for them at all, oddly enough. So, all things considered, it looks like the one and only album Garbage's target audience and I can agree on is the debut. But hey, one is better than nothing, right? After all, "2.0 versions" of softwares are rarely remembered in the same endearing way as the original versions are. Their supposed "novelty" quickly wears thin in public consciousness, and they ironically appear as more quaint than the original version years or decades after the fact. It's all summed-up in the double-meaning of the word "novelty", is it not? 2/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2) Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ----- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 43 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 53 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 102 (including this one) --- Émile: voir ma toute dernière réponse sous le disque *Triage* au-dessus.

Feel like we may have had an album from this group before, right? Not sure. It's decent though, a couple tracks I liked but struggled to hear anything special or "hear before you die" worthy. 2.5/5

Again this is nothing special. Interesting 90s quirky rock/pop. They have one album already in the 1001 but do we need two? I think not.

While there are some fun early-00’s bops on here, none of them rise above what I would’ve expected for the era. A good time but not wholly memorable all in all.

I liked their first more, but not much more.

Bleh. I hate Garbage. And they already have their supposedly "best" or at least most commercially successful album on the O.G. list. This is a wasted pick. Garbage is still garbage to me.