Creating a Garbage album is the musical equivalent of building a Hollywood blockbuster: you make the technical aspects of the production as impressive as possible, toss a shitload of marketing behind it, get your star's face on the cover of every magazine that doesn't have Goldie on it, and voila! The product is consumed en masse. Butch Vig is Garbage's James Cameron, which is to say that while his commercial instincts are nonparallel, he still cares about what he's doing and puts his soul into it. The new album is the appropriately titled Version 2.0. As in the software industry, this model builds on the previous, making slight improvements while keeping the overall look and feel, only occasionally complicating a simple feature from the older edition.

The first thing you'll notice about Version 2.0 is that the electronica aspect of the sound is more realized than on the debut, which makes perfect sense. If this album were released in 1978 it would be disco, in 1988, I don't know, probably hair metal. Things being what they are, it's heavy with loops and synthetic beats. Fortunately, Vig is a drummer and thus knows the difference between funky and cheesy electronic percussion. Most of these grooves are on point to the extent that you can close your eyes and hear the remix possibilities. Don't worry, those will come.

The songs play it close to the vest, duplicating the themes and content of the first album while adding a bit more raunch for the benefit of Shirley Manson's horny teenaged fan base. Occasionally, Manson sounds ridiculous, particularly when she tries to "get in character" like on "Sleep Together" or "Hammering In My Head." She doesn't have anywhere near the vocal charisma for whispered or chanted lyrics, and it sounds forced and silly. Same goes for lines like "Golden showers/ Happy hours;" Manson wants to cleverly discuss sex, but Liz Phair she ain't. If anything, she seemed more natural on the debut, although she has her moments here. "Special" is a solid Chrissie Hynde tribute, with the familiar vocal inflection, the title, and the outgoing "You're the talk of the town" refrain. And the slower "Medication" has her working effectively within her limitations.

What can you say about the sound? It's impossibly huge and perfectly mixed, and you can safely assume that Version 2.0 will be included in the syllabus of every recording arts student for the next twenty years. Dynamic range that spans the limits of the medium, a dense environment that nonetheless allows one to pick out individual instruments; sonically it just can't miss. Engineered for radio like no album in recent memory, Version 2.0 will no doubt make an impact that can only be described as, well, deep.

-Mark Richard-San, PitchforkMedia

--------------------------------------------

Beneath this CD's slick, danceable surface lurks a menacing, unpredictable animal ready to pounce--as well as a reason for pop music fans of all stripes to rejoice. Here's a band unafraid of mixing the latest sonic bleeps and blasts with references, both lyrical and otherwise, to classic guitar rock. On its 1995 debut, the result was occasionally like listening to Top-40 radio while vacuuming the living room. But not here, thanks to consistently strong songwriting and a sophisticated, multilayered sound that prevents any one whizbang musical element from stealing the show.

- People Magazine