A good place to start... but not designed to please the fans.

Perhaps, not entirely fairly, Garbage have been following the law of diminishing returns for almost a decade.

As most bands go on, record releases get further apart as they start to overthink their work, and sometimes, this means that the public loses all interest in their work during these gaps. The three years between "v2.0" and "beautiful garbage", and the four years between that and the underwhelming "Bleed Like Me" have seen Garbage not bother tinkering with their magic formula to what could be their detriment.

"Absolute Garbage" is a handy value for money package and a good entry point for the casual listener.  It's also like a Big Black album, in so much, as it start well and gets progressively worse as it continues. By the end, Garbage are sounding a little one-dimensional, trying variations on the same limited palette. As if it stopped being fun, and started being a job, a bad habit they can't break.

Now, this isn't to say this is by any means a bad record. It isn't. it's the crème de la crème of Garbage's work, and exemplifies exactly where their particular strengths lie : in writing slightly odd, heavily-processed, weird pop music. Garbage are the poor man's Curve : stealing the schtick of crunchy guitars and semi-engimatic breathy female vocals into a handy package. And some of the stuff is brilliant : "Stupid Girl", "Queer", "Milk", "I Think I'm Paranoid" are all concise, brilliant pop moments that tap into a particular mood and achieve a very singular vision within the space of four minutes. With tunes you can sing along to.

Sadly, as time wears on, the band fail to develop their sound or vision and start to sound as if they are going through the motions. Instead of the sense of compulsion, the sense of release, that these songs had to be sung, had to be written, it starts to feel as if the band are doing this because it's their job and they don't really know what else to do. When the music can't convince itself of it's essential need to exist, it's sometimes difficult for a listener to care either.

It's probably best then to skip the middle portion of this set : as time progresses the band become steadily less inventive and the songs less brilliant, which is a great shame. New track "Tell Me Where It Hurts" sounds like Garbage parodying Phil Spector : its by no means a bad thing, but nothing exceptional and lacks the punch-in-the-gut-WOW factor of great music.

That said, "Absolute Garbage" is no bad thing - it's a compact précis of the bands best work, and, for a two CD set seems keenly priced. The second CD compiles largely inessential remixes that will pique the curious, running the gamut of styles from generic and dated dance/club mixes (the type where the song being remixed is largely an afterthought), to entertaining diversions that sounds almost exactly like the remixers main work  - UNKLE's remix of "The World Is Not Enough", contributions from Massive Attack and Fun Lovin' Criminals : worth a listen, but not an essential part of any collection.

Overall, "Absolute Garbage" is a pretty good compilation : almost all the singles, presented sequentially, with a  bunch of remixes at a good price. Musically, it's not amazing and suffers slightly from the law of diminishing returns as the band run out of tricks as time progresses, but as an introduction to the bands work, you can't go wrong here.

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