Garbage: Bleed Like Me

Herald rating: * *

The band of Scots firebrand Shirley Manson and the three American boffins led by onetime star producer Butch Vig hasn't been able to top their rocktronic breakthrough mid-90s debut on subsequent albums, even if they occasionally made the charts a little more dangerous along the way. And on this fourth, the band's production-heavy formula has started to wear a little thin.

Certainly Manson can still make good use of her trademark sneer, especially on opener Bad Boyfriend, and then Why Do You Love Me (which features Dave "guest spot" Grohl on drums), while seemingly displaying some vulnerability on the title track and its own Walk On the Wild Side tale. But past those early tracks, the songs start coagulating into one quiet-loud electro-pulsed guitar squall verse-chorus after another.

It will help make up numbers on the inevitable best-of album, but Bleed Like Me sounds oddly anaemic.

Label: FMR