Garbage - Version 2.0

Beneath that acidic, sexy-as-all-hell death knell she calls a "voice," Shirley Manson has to be a good girl.

HAS to be. Where else does all this sweetness come from, the sudden breaks into lush harmonies that pepper Garbage's latest release, "Version 2.0"? If there has ever been a love child of Elvis Costello and Brian Wilson, Manson could be her. The songs on "2.0" aren't solely Manson's creative progeny; they're all co-written and co-produced with the other members of the band. But the attitudinal landscape which this music occupies is all laid out in the saccharine snarls of Manson's lead vocals.

On "Version 2.0," Garbage surrounds those vocals with some of the slickest and most clever production of the nineties. The Brian Wilson comparison isn't entirely off-base, production-wise; like Wilson's greatest works, there are plenty of noise wrenches tossed into the works of these songs to keep the ear constantly interested and returning for more. Only where Wilson would employ bicycle bells and steel drums, Garbage throws in samples, record scratches, and otherworldly sound effects. In addition, every inch of the ear's attention capacity is filled with noise, from the drum machines and bass that make up the rhythm section at the bottom of the tracks to the layered vocals that seem to surf along the top, occasionally dipping into the instrumentation to get their hair wet. It's a Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" for the new millennium.

It also can't be accidental that several of the songs borrow lyrically and musically from Wilson's work with the Beach Boys. There's a Manson reprise of the chorus from "Don't Worry Baby" in the album's lead single, "Push It"; there's a catchy number entitled "When I Grow Up"; and "Special" features a heartstopping evaporation of the instrumentation at two key moments in the song, leaving only Manson's Beach Boys-esque vocal harmonies slithering all over each other. Often the best bands know when to leave well enough alone and just shut the hell up. Such is the power of Garbage's production skills that they can strip away all the music and allow the more gentle assault of Manson's voice to successfully carry the weight of the song.

There is a lot of attack in this music, but there is also a strain of wistful gentleness. These gentle moments bring the mind's ear traveling back toward Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys yet again; there would seem to be a good deal of Brian Wilson at the thematic heart of "Version 2.0" as well as in the production approach. Perhaps Garbage's angry, glowing soul is best described as the dark side to Brian Wilson's endless summer. Wilson also has an unavoidable wistfulness to his songwriting and vocals, but he packages his tender yearnings in effervescent pop masterpieces that have all the bitter edge of a Barney special on PBS. Garbage flips the equation on its side; instead of confronting its wistful tendencies with sugar and spice, it tears the wistfulness into shreds, leaving only tiny bits to be detected in the endless loop of Shirley Manson's lyrical twists. Like Wilson, Manson seems to be trapped inside her own desires, and like Wilson, she programs that tension into her words. But Wilson seems to want to calm himself down with his music; Manson wants to rage against the storm in her own head.

All of this anger and desire and gentleness are there in that voice: part Alanis, part Joni, part Lennon. When you listen to Manson's incredible work on Garbage's "Version 2.0," you can picture her tearing the studio apart as she sings, in the classic destructive rock tradition. At the same time, you can see her regretting the destruction immediately and weeping alone after all the anger has gone. Garbage rests its music on the edge of this contradiction, and it never fails to engage.