Absolute Garbage

Four albums and seven Grammy® nominations later, Garbage has its first best of collection--Absolute Garbage. Along with the new track Tell Me Where It Hurts, Absolute Garbage features 17 songs of extreme and intense emotion, from Stupid Girl, Queer and #1 Crush to Special, Bleed Like Me and Why Do You Love Me.

With the band recently emerging from a hiatus for a live performance and the recording of Tell Me Where It Hurts, Absolute Garbage offers the best of a band that, to quote a lyric from Queer, has been the strangest of the strange, the coolest of the cool.

Taking inspiration from little known British band Curve, the formula behind Garbage was simple enough: Industrial strength beats, grungy guitars and ice queen vocals. But in Scottish fireball Shirley Manson the three middle-aged studio whizzes from Wisconsin not only found a muse but a front woman whose infinite charisma and wicked sense of humor--as evidenced by the title of this greatest hits set--gave even No Doubt a solid run in the hits race. For a few years, the group ruled the charts with shiny metallic pop gems like "Queer," "Stupid Girl," and "Only Happy When It Rains," hampered only by some remedial lyrics and a penchant for cribbing other bands' melodies (see: The Pretenders aping "Special"). There's a discernible dip in quality midway through this collection, when at the turn of the millennium Garbage seemingly lost its fire, but at least the group's token James Bond theme, "The World Is Not Enough," is more Shirley Bassey than Sheena Easton. Fans who are already up do date with the originals will want to pick up the special edition set that features a bonus disc of remixes by some of the biggest players on the '90s electronic music scene, including Massive Attack, The Crystal Method, and Unkle. --Aidin Vaziri