First, let it be said that I don't really like the Wiltern. The half general admission, half weird feeding stall setup kind of blows, particularly if it's a sold out show and the floor is so packed you can't really even move. I was originally happy to find out we had floor tickets, but we ended up in the back of the hall by the bar so we could actually see and breathe.

Not entirely thrilled with the show. Shirley looks great, having wisely ditched the femi-nazi look of the last tour. Eric's playing bass and not only does he sound great with them, it looks like he's having a blast. It's much more of a rock-band sound now, which I had a bit of a problem with... I mean, these guys have been doing the electro-rock thing for ages, and it's finally starting to be really popular (the bravery, bloc party, etc) so now they ditch it live and go for straight up rock interpretations of all their songs?

Maybe it's just a matter of playing a few more shows and tightening everything up, but quite a bit of the set was pretty sloppy and sounded off. The new songs they played sounded the best, which tells me in advance not to expect too much synths on the new album. Oh well. The all have quite a bit more confidence on stage than before, which I guess is also good, but again, I missed the Garbage of yore. I'll check them out again when they come back through town and see what time and road-testing does to the set.

The other thing - GREAT light setup, poor usage and design. If you're going to blow all that cash on a kick-ass concept, why did you make everything look like cheesy screensavers?