(Translated from my original Italian text by Gemini and Piero Scaruffi)

Garbage (Almo, 1995) was one of the revelations of alternative rock in 1995. It was actually the project of a trio of forty-year-old producers: Steve Marker, Duke Erikson, and the world-famous Butch Vig (here on drums). These three recording studio wizards alternate between keyboards and sampling, composing scores that are miniature symphonies of production tricks. The songs themselves blend pop, glam, and new wave sensibilities: the catchiness of the first, the decadent tone of the second, and the experimental pretensions of the third. The idea is not to stun, but to seduce: dense harmonies dominated by minor keys. The whole thing is seasoned by the vocal register of Scottish singer Shirley Manson, a mixture of Patti Smith's neurasthenic aggression, Chrissie Hynde's (Pretenders) feminist sexuality, and Courtney Love's (Hole) lascivious adolescent coarseness. Manson (who had previously released an album in her homeland with Goodbye Mr Mackenzie in 1989 and one with Angelfish in 1994) sings her ballads with nonchalance, indifferent to the quantity and quality of sounds that populate the arrangements.
Constant rhythm changes, slimy techno inflections, cascading hard-rock riffs, and anemic chanting make Supervixen a contradiction in terms. The hit of the collection, Only Happy When It Rains, is however one of the most linear songs, largely dependent on Manson's catchy chorus (very similar to Chris Isaak's Voodoo) and accompanied by a frantic strumming of guitars. The metamorphoses of the arrangement are, this time, imperceptible. Less effective but equally successful, Vow utilizes a ringing chorus and harsher sounds, featuring a no less spectacular carousel of sonic events. The producers are obviously well aware of current fashions: Manson's fatal and indolent noir pearls the trip hop of Queer and A Stroke Of Luck; trance and alienation coexist in the whisper over the clattering techno rhythm of As Heaven Is Wide; the exuberant cadences of Madchester and the spatial tremolo of shoegazers propel Not My Idea. Stupid Girl, with an obsessive disco-music cadence, spatial electronics, and Blondie-esque vocalizations, even digs back in time. More than rock music tracks, these are jams of studio effects—layers of sound superimposed and artfully set.

Version 2.0 (Geffen, 1998) has a couple of immediate knockout songs: the exuberant melodies of Temptation Waits and When I Grow Up, the explosive punk-rock with a disco rhythm of Dumb, the excellent Pretenders imitation of Special, and Push It, which tries to repeat the success of Only Happy When It Rains with an equally drawling melody and an equally fatalistic guitar riff, but this time also with a modernist beat reminiscent of Madonna. The accompaniments and instrumental bridges are the quintessence of studio creativity: keyboards, guitars, and percussion merge into a harmonious flow. Aided by a host of veteran session-men, the producers who make up Garbage outdo themselves in their race toward a synthetic song that summarizes the moods of the era.
Manson's "sick" ballads, above all I Think I'm Paranoid, are inspired by Nirvana and the Pretenders; the modernist dances, like Hammering In My Head, borrow Madonna's organic polyrhythms. A group of light ballads with orchestral funky-soul arrangements (The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, You Look So Fine) either spoil or ennoble the record (depending on one's taste).
This record simultaneously accentuates the trip-hop sound and disco rhythms. The songs are packed with velvety sounds. Garbage's music is a kind of "audiophile" rock—rock for audiophiles, for fans of sound for its own sake. Vig writes songs that seem like a collage of FM radio stereotypes. Manson's languid vocalizations and the sexual obsessions of this punk heroine are a pure corollary.

The ballad The World Is Not Enough (1999) kept attention high.