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If Bugy Craxone harbored any desire to be Garbage (the band, not the refuse), it’s long in the past.

On its previous album, Northern Hymns, Bugy Craxone ditched the ’90s alt-rock smorgasborg of its first two albums for straight-ahead garage rock.

Despite being a fashionable move at the time — Northern Hymns was released in the same year the White Stripes crossed over — the creative direction suited the band.

And it’s one that works for them again on Sorry, I will scream here.

This time working on an indie budget after leaving major label Victor Entertainment, the band offers up a less polished, grittier sound. The mastering may sound a bit less powerful, but the performances are much harder.

“Why not?” is a steady three-minute barrage of power chords. The snarl that vocalist Suzuki Yukiko introduced the last time returns on “I’m sorry”, while on the concluding track, “I scream”, she does exactly that.

Some garage rock gestures are more apparent.

“Lucky” starts with the same kind of hesitant pulse as Television’s “Marquee Moon”. “Big mouth” shows off a swagger that’s pure rock ‘n’ roll — simple and deadpan.

Bugy Craxone doesn’t turn its back completly on the alt-rock anthems that powered the first half of its career.

With slightly different production, “11gatsu” and “Toosaku no Mori” could sound like they came off of the band’s second album, Yuganda Ao to Tsukenai Kanjoo no Soko.

The creative shift to a garage sound has had another effect on Bugy Craxone’s songs — brevity.

Sorry, I will scream here flies by at a brisk 32 minutes. The 9-minute “Furanii to Zoe” occupies nearly a third of the album’s length — the remaining two-thirds are spread out over 8 tracks.

That means an average of 3 minutes per song — the textbook length for a pop song. It also means songs with tighter structures and clearer ideas.

“Oto mo Hikari mo Nai Basho de Ugoku Koto wo Yameta Shin” was a great single for Bugy Craxone in 2000, but that title was a mouthful. And its 6 1/2-minute length is a far cry from the 2’44” of “I’m sorry” — both in content and length.

Bugy Craxone does a good job pursuing its extreme makeover on Sorry, I will scream here. It’s an album title that delivers on its promise.

Higurashi Aiha’s work with Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her can be described with a number of similar-sounding adjectives.

Gritty, rough, deadpan, punk.

“Tender” isn’t one of them.

So perhaps that’s why Higurashi opted to collect her most introspective writing for her debut solo album, Born Beautiful.

The cover of the album is somewhat sarcastic — Higurashi’s lifeless expression on a magazine cover obscured by a paperweight. But the title of the album makes for a good description of its contents.

Higurashi still dashes off a fair amount of swagger — “Cherry (Sakura no Saku Koro)” finds the songwriter giving a breathy performance over a classic rock-styled riff. And with a few more guitars, “Koibito” could have been a serviceable Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her song.

But the majority of the album is definitely scaled back from the ambition of her main project. The shades of rock ‘n’ roll history cast a shadow over most of the songs.

There’s almost a bubblegum pop quality to the pre-release singles, “New Life” and “Fantasy”, but it’s a quality imbued with the world weariness intrinsic to Higurashi’s voice.

On “I’m your girl”, her performance falls somewhere between rock ‘n’ roll bad girl and blues storyteller.

Other tracks find Higurashi exploring a more confessional tone. “A rhythm like my heart beat” is already a telling title — the lyrics, in English, follow suite.

“Sin” finishes the album with a series of guitar overtones and sparse lyrics — nothing more.

With Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Higurashi asserted herself as a rocker, a guitar-slinging woman who could play as loud as the best of them.

Born Beautiful pretty much dashes those expectations. Here, she asserts herself as a songwriter, one with enough nuance to rock when she has to but whisper when it’s suitable.

Rounder Records has put up audio excerpts of Minnie Driver’s debut album, Everything I’ve Got In My Pocket. I’ve been tracking the development of this album since hearing about it earlier in the year. And the anticipation I feel for this debut hasn’t waned (much), despite all indications it’s going to suck harder than a vacuum cleaner. Perhaps that’s part of the spectacle. I’m sure, though, I’ll balk when it actually comes time to approach the cash register with Minnie’s album in hand.

Equally exciting news is the release of Hem’s second album, Eveningland. The group’s debut album, Rabbit Songs, was my favorite of 2002.

Oct. 5 is actually going to be a pretty busy release day — Utada Hikaru’s Exodus, mono’s Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined, Minnie Driver’s Everything I’ve Got In My Pocket and Hem’s Eveningland. All that needs to happen is Duran Duran’s Astronaut getting bumped up a week, and I’ll be poor for sure.

Read all the feminist rhetoric you want into Sister/Benten’s role as women’s music champion. For US audiences, the chauvinistic perception remains.

Bands with Japanese chicks are hot.

Throw in the pop culture cuteness that yields the likes of Hello Kitty, and that hot factor rises proportionally.

So while Sister/Benten may be raising the profile of women in Asia, the label, whether it knows, is selling sex in the US.

For Tsu*Shi*Ma*Mi*Re, it can get tricky.

The music on the trio’s debut album, Soozoo Ninshin, can sound cute. Guitarist/vocalist Mari sings with a nasal, coquettish voice, and on a few tracks, the band is downright playful.

But that overlooks the breadth of styles Tsu*Shi*Ma*Mi*Re covers, let alone the zeal with which they perform — and, at times, deconstruct — them.

No, they’re not a very good disco band, nor are they a good jazz band, or ska band, or garage band, or psych band.

They are, however, willing to give it all a shot.

Soozoo Ninshin is all over the place where songwriting is concerned, but the band’s down-to-basics approach pulls it all together, oftentimes with multiple styles in one song.

Each of the genres listed two paragraphs ago are represented — “Umeumai Tanedekai” (disco), “Lingerie Shop” (jazz), “Ocha Ska” (ska), “Ebihara Shinji” (garage), “Manhole” (psych).

“Manhole” is the epic centerpiece of the album. The band gets downright noisy on this track, while Mari’s sprechstimme devolves into a passionate cry of the song’s title.

On “Ocha Ska”, Mari interrupts a buoyant chorus with a manly growl. “Kedama Boogie” shows the band shoeing in on eX-Girl’s operatic gymnastics, while “Kyamaboko” juggles between an agitated hook and some big metal gestures.

The album ends with the chaotic title track, a song that starts off quietly, then builds to a crashing, circular finish.

Any hint of cuteness Soozoo Ninshin may have started out with is pretty much dust by the end.

And that works to Tsu*Shi*Ma*Mi*Re’s advantage — a band of Japanese chicks may be hot, but at least you get a good album out it.

If one word could be chosen to describe Kokeshi Doll, it would be “sinister”.

The strangled singing of vocalist Okuyama Naomi sounds like a demon alien could pop out of her chest at any moment.

And there’s a wild abandon to the band’s music that sounds like how evil would feel. (Or so I imagine.)

But Kokeshi Doll isn’t a one-note wonder.

The all-women trio sticks to a basic sound — overdubs are at a minimum on the band’s second mini album Pill Korui — but they manage to cover a lot of ground doing so.

“Suicide Boogie” has the swagger of every Thee Michelle Gun Elephant song — all one of them. “Renchi no Uta” starts with an eerie, minimal intro, then launches into a song that seamlessly alternates between garage rock and hardcore.

“MESU Gyakugo” is just a wall of screaming noise, while “Shiroi Hako” is what Rivers Cuomo would write if he were a pissed-off Japanese girl.

The rest of the time, the band’s songs wander and stumble, start up and break down. But seldom does any of it sound random.

If anything, tracks such as “Mikeneko no Te” and “Heavy” sound like chaos on the surface but reveal a very purposeful sense of structure. Okuyama may be tearing her voice out, but she’s not being arbitrary about it.

It’s a neat trick, and one for which Kokeshi Doll deserves credit.

Pill Korui could have sunk under too much anarchy, but the women of Kokeshi Doll are smart enough to keep a reign on things.