Garbage: beautifulgarbage

The oft-maligned art of sampling has helped many musical acts turn derivativeness into an art form, but Garbage is savvier than most in cobbling together the sounds of its influences. Combining three inventive studio veterans, a bottomless bag of production tricks, and the appropriately chameleonic vocals and lyrics of Shirley Manson, Garbage deftly mixes and matches styles, genres, and personas to suit the times. As a result, its music tends to feel both technically proficient and emotionally distant, more like a slick studio construct than a heartfelt expression. Garbage's first album in three years, beautifulgarbage is its clearest manifestation of that approach, with each track seeming to directly and effectively recall a different influence. If Garbage wanted to subvert itself, it could have named the songs in beautifulgarbage's first half after the artists whose work it unmistakably recalls, changing "Til The Day I Die" to "The Pretenders" and "Cup Of Coffee" to "PJ Harvey." "Can't Cry These Tears" again proves Garbage to be appealingly conversant in girl-group pop, while the coy, provocative "Androgyny" recalls the coy, provocative pop of countless Madonna singles before it. Elsewhere, "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)" has fun with cutesy, retro dance cheese, while the irresistible "Parade," beautifulgarbage's finest moment, is a magnificent slab of fastball power-pop. That Manson and company manage to be derivative of so many artists, styles, and sounds marks a feat in its own right, and an oddly admirable one at that. It helps that the disc is never less than briskly listenable, aided by the fact that no two tracks go for quite the same effect. As always, it's not high art, but with a name like Garbage, this is a band that has never claimed such highfalutin ambitions.