Four million albums. That’s where Garbage was standing after their first album. The quartet moved on to the “tougher” second record. Not so tough after all knowing they are the sum of four very solid careers. Three producers from Wisconsin, Butch Vigh (Nirvana’s Nevermind), Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker who took Shirley Manson from her native Scotland after seeing a music video of Angelfish – her former band – at 2 a.m. on MTV. Shirley had already worked on eight albums. This second opus for Garbage exerts much more confidence. They felt it was their best. To the immediacy of Garbage, Version 2.0 opposed a polysemous poetry, an emulsion of deep, multi-layered emotions. There are different levels of interpretation and visual aesthetics crafted along videographer Andrea Giacobi that act as a persistence of vision. While Push It acts as a bridge between both albums, the rest delves even further. The quartet works the contrasts between tune and noise, electro distortion (Dumb, Hammering in My Head) and pop harmony (When I Grow Up, I Think I’m Paranoid, which quotes the Beach Boys), ballads (Medication, You Look So Fine) and mad guitar riffs, with a particular taste for the uncanny, impeccable productions and the search for the perfect pop song and future conjunctions. With its post-grunge guitars, its noise experimentations, Shirley Manson’s insane charisma and distorted voice, Garbage managed to refine its genome in just twelve tracks. A DNA that fits perfectly in the futuristic destroy sound of 1998, yet feels slightly dated twenty years later. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz