Grade: C
It was easy to forgive Bush for ripping off genuine alternative rock in 1994.
After all, the movement was dying fast, and Bush’s best record, their debut Sixteen Stone, tried as hard as it could to mesh together some dirty power chords, sugary hooks and whisper/scream vocals into one neat little package.
Noted with a plethora of hits including “Everything Zen,” “Little Things,” “Comedown,” “Machinehead” and “Glycerine,” Sixteen Stone sold many records and plastered lead singer Gavin Rossdale on the cover of every teen magazine in the country. Whether this went to his head or not is up for debate, but Bush’s 1996 return Razorblade Suitcase was a step down for the band.
There are only so many simple chord combinations a group can come up with, but Bush churned out three moderate hits with “Greedy Fly,” “Swallowed” and a remix of “Mouth” for the “American Werewolf In Paris” soundtrack. The Steve Albini-produced Razorblade Suitcase was Bush’s largest undertaking to date, prompting a large arena tour with The Jesus Lizard and Veruca Salt. The record was decent for the fans, but the reduced quality of the music was all too apparent. Bush was running out of steam in the verse-chorus-verse genre of rock.
1999 saw the release of Bush’s most ambitious album to date, The Science of Things, a simple although electronically tinged record that just never took off. “The Chemicals Between Us” made a mild splash and “Warm Machine” was a fan favorite, but the rest of the album was nothing more than an amalgam of weak, repetitive hooks and flat sounding tunes. Equally flat were album and ticket sales.
So what does a band do when things fall apart like this? Go back to their “Golden State,” or at least try to recapture the magic of the glory days.
Bush’s latest record Golden State, tries so hard to be everything Bush used to be, but the record is disappointing. Front loaded with catchy tracks, the album struggles to fill itself out, and as a result, the overall composition sounds like a watered down version of everything that is popular on the radio right now. This is not a good thing.
The lead track, “Solutions,” sounds promising at the onset with its finger-picked chords in the vain of “Greedy Fly,” but quickly dissipates into a loud blend of barely melodic power chords as though loud equals good, when in fact, melody equals good. Rossdale’s counterpart Gwen Stefani hasn’t had a hard time putting together platinum records in the last several years, why has he? You’d think that a guy who used to have his hand on the pulse of the alternative rock crowd would be able to put together a better album, but the repetition on the album represents a musical fatigue that is going to be very tough for Rossdale and his bandmates in Bush to break.
“Headful of Ghosts” is one of the best tracks on the record, with its melodic chorus of “where is my head/ where are my bones?/ can you save me from myself?” on top of compressed guitar chords and high-pitched guitar squeals from guitarist Nigel Pulsford. Although Rossdale’s lyrics often seem like they come from a less-than-genuine place, the track works and is a standout on “Golden State.” Look for it to be the follow-up to the first single, “The People That We Love.”
If any track gets back to the Bush of the past, it’s “The People That We Love.” Opening with Pulsford’s scratchy guitar work, Rossdale kicks in with a high-energy chord progression that cuts out in time for a drum and bass verse.
The track is repetitive but the melody is one of the best that Bush has come up with in the several years, since the release of Sixteen Stone. You sense a rising intensity in the track, and it is fulfilled by a straight-ahead rhythm.
“Superman” doesn’t get to the hooks soon enough, and “Fugitive” spends most of its time hiding from being original, sounding like a b-side. “Hurricane” is the best up-tempo rocker on the second half of the album, and “Inflatable” is a gorgeous ballad track in the tradition of “Glycerine” but is offset by dull tracks like “Reasons” and “My Engine Is With You.”
Overall, Bush is sliding down the ladder. No longer able to play the large arenas due to an increasingly skeptical audience, the band has tried their hardest to come through with a genuine return to the their roots. “Golden State” doesn’t live up to its intent. There are glimmers of the past but they are packed into the first three tracks of the album, and thereafter are few and far between. Bush had a good run; they had their fifteen minutes of fame, but the machine is sputtering and a breakdown in the band seems almost certain.