Tracks 9 and 10 from Beautiful Garbage (2001)

Tracks 11 and 12 from Bleed Like Me (2005)

Garbage's first album was one of those records that took some time to take off, with each of the first four singles bigger than the one before it. But if I recall correctly, my brother bought Garbage the week it was released or soon after, we'd seen "Vow" on 120 Minutes and there was a fair amount of early magazine coverage of the band based on Nevermind producer Butch Vig starting a new band. So we were kind of early to get into Garbage and that album was really part of our summer '95 soundtrack alongside the Foo Fighters debut and the first Mike Watt solo album. And I was skeptical they could do it again, but Version 2.0 was another record that just kept spinning off hits. I haven't paid as much attention to their later records, but really enjoyed what I heard while putting together this playlist. 

I feel like there was a little suspicion of Garbage because it was these established producers going out and finding a glamorous frontwoman and making this big, gleaming, expensive-sounding debut album. But really I think they were kind of the best case scenario for alternative rock becoming more careerist and professional in the mid-'90s. Yes, the tortured weirdos who'd broken through in the early '90s were getting pushed off the radio, but Garbage had a more interesting and individual perspective, than, I dunno, Live or Everclear. Really the way they were ahead of the curve in marrying industrial and trip hop sounds to alt-rock and their stuff has held up really well.