Years ago a colleague at work forced me to sit down and listen to their first album. "Listen to this", he raved, "you'll love it!" I didn't love it. I thought it was a bit pappy.

Perhaps my taste has developed since then. Perhaps a single listening just wasn't enough to appreciate it (often true, I find). Perhaps Garbage should have put something a bit more energetic as the first track. Whatever it was, the album didn't do anything for me and I pretty much forgot about them.

Now Garbage have brought out their second album (Version 2.0), and everybody's raving about that. OK, I thought. I'll give them another go. Our lodger (at the time) had a copy of the first album, and so I gave it a good listening. Hmm, I discovered that I still didn't like some of the tracks, but some of them were excellent. "Only Happy When it Rains" is probably the best example of the ones I liked. It's got a high energy, electric sort of sound.

Now, "Version 2.0" has taken to good bits of the first album, and made them better. Most of the songs are fabulous. They're high energy, electric, dancey - yet somehow they've got atmosphere as well. And it's this atmosphere that makes them special. My personal favourite track is "Hammering in my Head".

There's one mystery I'd like explaining... Why do Garbage only put an incomplete summary of the lyrics into their CD booklets? It's kind of impressionist I suppose, but it's still strange.