After Three Straight Misses, 90's Post-Grunge Posterboys Bush Finally Connect With 'The Kingdom'

Looking back at Bush’s career over the last 26 years since their breakout smash album Sixteen Stone dropped, they’ve had a pretty strange run for quite a few reasons. I don’t think I’ve ever come across somebody who hates Bush, or even actively dislikes them, but at the same time I’ve also never seen someone say Bush is their favorite band. At the same time though, it seems difficult to write them off as nothing other than middle of the road given that they’ve always had some degree of notable success. That 1994 explosion onto the Grunge/Alternative Rock scene was undeniably pretty electrifying, and it’s stood the test of time given that it still gets tons of radio play decades later. You won’t go more than a couple days without hearing Glycerine or Everything Zen on your local Alt Rock station, not that I would be caught dead listening to the radio but that’s a different conversation. It’s an album that’s gotten tons of recognition and essentially built the band a career, yet you’ll never find anybody saying that they love it or anything. Sure, Bush has never been a particularly innovative band in the slightest, but I’ve always been a little bit puzzled as to why they’ve been written off the way they have. Granted, their reunion albums leading up to this one give the world pretty good reasons to do so. They’ve seemingly just gotten more boring and uninteresting with each album they put out in the 2010’s, leading up to the most anticlimactic point in their career - Black and White Rainbows. That 2017 flop of a record left me curious as to how they’d ever revitalize interest in the Bush name, especially considering they’d have to actually put in some effort to do so, and that brings us to this week in 2020 when The Kingdom dropped.

I really didn’t think these guys had this album in them, like at all. After the last couple records I assumed they were entirely out of ideas and furthermore lacked the energy and passion to make a record that sounded like they cared. However, I’d be lying if I said this newest album from the 90’s hitmakers didn’t change my mind at least a little bit. In traditional Bush fashion, it’s far from an original or game-changing record in the slightest, but it’s arguably their heaviest and for sure their most interesting since 2001. They’ve injected a bit of Alternative Metal influence into the guitarwork and extremely breathy vocal performance from Gavin Rossdale, so that’s the first attempt at changing the formula they’ve made in ages. Of course it’s nothing new to the rest of the music world in the slightest, but this heavier slant on the Bush formula is one that managed to get me reinvested in the band much more than I expected to be. I remember being pretty impressed by their single Bullet Holes after hearing it in the end credits of John Wick 3. I had no idea who it was performing the song and wound up Shazaming it while the movie was rolling, just to wind up with my jaw on the floor that I was listening to a Bush song. In the context of this record I’d say it’s not even my favorite of the bunch too, so that’s a great sign in the album’s favor already. The heavier, more focused and metallic style of guitar playing is the first time that new guitarist Chris Traynor has actually contributed something distinguishable to the band’s sound. Once again, this is still a record coming from arguably one of the least innovative Rock bands ever, but at the core of all those, we’ll say familiar, sounds are some surprisingly well written songs. Songs that stuck in my head ten times more than any other song they’ve come out with since The People That We Love in 2001.

The sixth track Quicksand is the best example of everything this album does right. It’s one of the heaviest, most intense sounding songs I can recall Bush ever releasing, and it’s got so much more motion in it than the typical Bush track does. The main guitar riff is one that spirals around in all the right directions, swirling around Gavin’s particularly breathy vocals in a way that actually compliments them. By the time the chorus rolls around, it winds up solidifying the track as one of the band’s best in ages as far as I’m concerned. I’m surprised it took me until right now to make this comparison, but it basically sounds like a 2002 Chevelle song. Actually, I could see this entire album being performed by Chevelle instead. I would totally believe this was a Chevelle record if I was hearing Pete’s voice instead of Gavin’s. While it’s derivative, I want to make it clear that I mean that as nothing short of a compliment, as I’ve always found Chevelle to be twice as notable of a band as Bush. The awkward and misguided sound we got from their last three albums has finally found its footing in this heavier, more direct and focused style and I’m all for it. There are plenty of hooks, and especially guitar riffs, that I didn’t mind hearing replay in my head for hours after turning this album off. I never thought I’d be saying that about a post-reunion Bush record, but I’d just be lying if I said I disliked this album.

While I enjoyed this record far more than I expected to, it is certainly far from without its flaws. I mean yeah I was sweet talking the album up until this point, but while it’s an improvement this is still a Bush album in 2020. Gavin’s vocals, while they are much more fitting to this sound than they were on the last few records, still give me some awkward vibes at the end of the day. He never once cranks up the energy and delivers a vocal passage that matches the same level of intensity that the rest of the band is bringing to the table. He’s still got his same breathy delivery that has pretty much never changed since the band’s inception, and it already started to get old quite a while ago. I’m not saying I hate his voice necessarily, as there have been plenty of tracks in the band’s discography that it’s fit quite well over. However, every other member of the band is turning things up and getting louder, so it’s frustrating that Gavin isn’t doing the same. If Gavin had brought just a small handful of screams, or even just more energetic vocals on a couple of songs, it would’ve been the push this record needed to be truly great. On top of that, the lyricism on here is just about as forgettable as you’d expect it to be. That’s one thing that Bush has never really been known for, but one here I just found a lot of lines and transitionary moments to be really jagged and not well thought out. For instance, the pre-chorus of Flowers on a Grave (a song I enjoy quite a bit) finds Gavin singing “and what goes up” - and that’s it. He doesn’t resolve the line, just leaves it there. I understand the point of the line is that we all know what comes after it and we can all fill in the blanks, but it just comes across as lazy and underwritten in all the wrong ways. Gavin might be the most recognizable and iconic part of Bush’s sound, but at this point in the band’s reunion he’s the only one who still kind of comes across like he doesn’t care through these recordings.

I got a lot more mileage and enjoyment out of this record than I ever expected to, so for what it’s worth this is easily the best thing Bush has done in almost 20 years. However, it’s held back by three issues: Gavin not bringing enough energy to his performance, the lyrics needing a little bit more work, and the same lack of originality Bush has always had. Granted all three of these issues are a million times more minimal than the last three records, and while they sound like huge issues they’re all individually ignorable on this album. If even just one of those issues was solved in some way or another, I can see myself giving this record a solid 8/10, but that’s not the case. I still really love a lot of the songs on this thing, but when all three of those issues stack up on top of eachother consistently I find myself having to shave some points off. While that takes away from how much praise I can let myself give this thing, it’s still deserving of more recognition than it’s getting. I mean seriously, I can totally see the argument that this is a genuine return to form for Bush. Not to sound like a broken record, but this is the first genuinely good album they’ve put out in near 20 years, and that is for sure worth some praise. Aside from replaying Peace-S maybe 4 or 5 times, this is the first time I’ve heard any Bush song that I’ve wanted to come back to in ages. On top of that, more than half of this record is something that I would gladly seek out and return to here and there. It’s an understatement to say that Bush has had a rocky decade throughout the 2010’s, but for the first time in 9 years I can safely say that The Kingdom is a step in the right direction for the band. It’s still got some of the same issues that have just become part of Bush’s sound, but they find themselves taking their sound in a much heavier and more intense direction here. Safe to say, that was a pretty flattering move. - 7.4/10 (Best Songs - Quicksand, Send In the Clowns, Crossroads)