I remember being in my early teens. One album I was listening a lot to was Sixteen Stone by British band Bush, lead by charismatic front man Gavin Rossdale. If I would pick up that album today I think I would still remember the lyrics and such from most of the songs. There were some real classic songs like Machine head, Glycerine, Comedown etc. After that album Bush never reached that level of songwriting again, although Golden State is a good album. The band broke up for a while with especially Gavin being busy with solo records as well as an album side project Institute. I did like the Institute album which was more straight forward rock but they did not match Bush in my eyes. Neither did his solo stuff. So I was really excited when I heard that Bush got back together to release a new album.
Sea of Memories is the first studio album in 10 years. It’s also the first one to feature new members Christ Traynor and Corey Britz. Still remaining is Gavin and Robin Goodridge. Some of you might have heard the song Sound of Winter which is present in the video game NHL12 as well as SKI Channels “Winter”. That is sadly not a super exciting song, it never really gets going. All My Life is a better song with a cool guitar lick throughout the song. One song I do like is All Night Doctors which is piano led along with a guitar with the same sounds as they used in Glycerine. Very nice! Red Light is also nice with a nice intro. Among the rest of the songs there are not many stand out tracks, they kind of float together. Some songs are quite weak, I do not care too much for Baby Come Home or She’s a Stallion.
After spending some quality time with this album I must say that I am a bit disappointed. Maybe I was hoping for too much. This album is a bit too commercial for me but I guess they had to move this way to reach a wider audience. It is not a bad album at all, it is a solid rock record. But to me it just does not sound like the classic Bush, maybe due to the absence of Nigel Pulsford in particular. I guess I was just expecting…more.
