In the wake of the new "Absolute Garbage" collection, the members of Garbage are eyeballing mid-2008 to begin making their fifth album.

"We're talking about it," drummer Butch Vig tells Billboard.com, adding that he expects the group to group to head in a markedly different stylistic direction than on its four previous releases.

"If we want to continue making records," Vig explains, "we don't necessarily want to repeat ourselves and do that electronica/rock/hip-hop beats/pop melodies with noise and guitars ... however you would describe us. I think we're interested in making something that's much more sort of primal and stripped down."

Vig says a model might come from the benefit Garbage played for ailing drummer Wally Ingram in California earlier this year, when the quartet played acoustic with a string section.

"It was great, and the crowd went nuts," Vig recalls. "It made us realize how fun it could be to do a record that way. More Neil Young 'Tonight's the Night' meets Leonard Cohen meets Mazzy Star -- druggy, bummer music. Not necessarily druggy, but melancholy and bittersweet.

"Listening to our body of work, my favorite songs are stuff like that -- 'Milk' and 'Queer' and 'You Look So Fine' and 'Bleed Like Me,' the slow and sultry stuff," he continues. When Shirley (Manson) sings that way, I just fall in love with her voice. So I think we could make a completely different record than anything we've done before. It'll probably be commercial suicide, but the music business is so f*cked up now, maybe it'll be the most inaccessible record of our career and we'll have it be the biggest hit."

Vig, however, expects "a long hiatus" for Garbage, with recording not starting until next summer, at least. He recently produced albums for Against Me! and the Subways and mixed the new Jimmy Eat World release. Manson is working on a solo album due in early 2008, and fellow members Duke Erikson and Steve Marker are working on their own projects in England and Colorado, respectively.

"'Absolute Garbage' is the postscript to chapter one," Vig says. "Whatever we do next will definitely be chapter two."