Garbage’s dirty blend of beautiful yet mega-textured guitars, bombastic yet programmed percussion, screechy yet sublime synthetics, and punky yet sultry vocals helped redefine alternative rock in the 90s. Three producers and one insanely charismatic frontwoman: surely the band of the future? But like so many of their 90s electronica contemporaries, Garbage found themselves struggling to find a place in the stupidly technophobic rock world of the new millennium. Despite being their most daring and diverse album yet, 2001’s Beautifulgarbage fell on deaf ears, and it fell hard. Beautifulgarbage is an admittedly flawed album; but when a single like “Cherry Lips (Go Baby, Go)” fails to inspire the planet’s youth to put on their dancing shoes, something is profoundly wrong with the world.

Thankfully, the commercial tragedy of Beautifulgarbage wasn’t enough to send the band packing with their tails between their legs for too long, as they’ve returned with a new full length album — their fourth in ten years — Bleed Like Me. The placement of their tails, however, remains somewhat in question.

Triumphant lead single “Why Do You Love Me?” is the perfect song to reintroduce Garbage to a world full of fickle hipsters too young to remember how important this band was just a few years ago, however, the rest of the album is decidedly less direct. While not bad, really, Bleed Like Me is certainly, er, anemic. This album finds Garbage pulling what we’re going to call, “a U2.” That is to say, releasing an album nobody liked that was actually pretty good (substitute U2’s Pop for Beautifulgarbage) and instead of saying fuck you and pressing on, they decide to more or less cover their more popular former selves (substitute Joshua Tree for Garbage) and create a relatively average album that will appease old fans and replant their flag directly on the beach of the mainstream (substitute All That You Can’t Leave Behind for Bleed Like Me).

But the worst Garbage album is still leagues better than the best U2 dad-rock. While it’s a little disappointing to see this very progressive band return to a sound they’d proclaimed to have left behind, it’s probably worth it to live in a world with solid Garbage dance-rockers like “Boys Wanna Fight,” “Run Baby Run,” and “Metal Heart.” The title track — the first title track this band’s ever had — is far and away the standout song. A mellow-loud-mellow self-destruction anthem in the tradition of “#1 Crush,” “Medication,” and “You Look So Fine,” “Bleed Like Me” is set to be Garbage’s most interesting single yet, as Manson is sure to be taken to task for the most blatant self-mutilation references she’s ever committed to ProTools.

Louder than Beautifulgarbage but not as loud as Garbage; “live-er” than Version 2.0, but not as epic, Bleed Like Me is a bittersweet sonic portrait of a band who once made a name for themselves by cleverly combining the leftovers of their favorite genres now, for better or for worse, combining the leftovers of themselves.

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