The Sea Of Memories
These British grunge bandwagoneers wrote some undeniably catchy tunes back in the ‘90s and their first album since 2001’s *Golden State* is another successful collection of ultra-catchy hooks and powerful production. With producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Mötley Crüe) ensuring the guitars soar and the vocals rise to the occasion, *The Sea of Memories* hits some very high points. “All My Life” is a tune that sounds like the Bush of old. Except that’s guitarist Chris Traynor from singer Gavin Rossdale’s Institute working in place of Nigel Pulsford alongside new bassist Corey Britz. It’s essentially Rossdale’s show. It’s his distinctive growl that brings home the note-perfect chorus of “The Afterlife.” The ballad “All Night Doctors” sounds as emotively powerful as emo legends Smoking Popes. “Baby Comes Home” evokes memories of their classic “Everything Zen.” While Bush never received the critical kudos at the time, the band’s genuine pursuit of the perfect hard- rock single lends an urgency to solid album tracks such as “I Believe In You” and “The Heart of the Matter.”
Gavin Rossdale can rightly be accused of a multitude of artistic sins—he’s a grunge-rock opportunist, a terrible lyricist, a precursor to everything awful now dominating modern-rock radio—but nobody can take away his canny sense of timing. Emerging just months after Kurt Cobain’s death, Bush’s multi-platinum 1994…
A decade after releasing the group’s forgotten swan song Golden State, Gavin Rossdale assembled a new lineup of Bush -- only retaining drummer Robin Goodridge, replacing guitarist Nigel Pulsford and bassist Dave Parsons with Chris Traynor and Corey Britz -- for a 2011 comeback called Sea of Memories.
BUSH is back with its first album in 10 years and still haven't released anything that will reignite anything close to the kind of passion fans felt with 1994's seminal modern rock (or alterna-metal) masterpiece "Sixteen Stone" nor its less successful, though still musically relevant follow-up "Razo...