Gavin Rossdale harnessed the power of the '90s on the reconstituted
Bush's 2011 comeback album,
The Sea of Memories, hiring veteran hard rock producer
Bob Rock to give the group a steely sheen. Sonically, the whole thing worked better than some of the records they made when they still were a going concern on the Billboard charts -- but the record didn't do much commercially, necessitating a change in direction for 2014's
Man on the Run.
Rossdale's
Bush remains the same -- the only other surviving original member is drummer
Robin Goodridge -- but the aesthetic has changed and so have the producers, with
Nick Raskulinecz (
Evanescence,
Deftones,
Foo Fighters) and
Jay Baumgardner (
Ugly Kid Joe,
Papa Roach) getting the credits here.
Man on the Run does indeed have a deliberately modern glint, one that incorporates burbling electronics, the occasional drum loop, and a heaping amount of gloss upon the grunge grind. As aurally busy as this production is -- and there are times where there's simply too much going on, the stuttering digital blips competing with the melodies, the riffs, the rhythmic wallop -- this album also houses some of
Rossdale's strongest melodies in quite some time, songs that could pull in a AAA crossover if they weren't decked out in vaguely electronic hard rock clatter. This dissonance -- how the production pushes in an opposite direction than the tunes -- makes
Man on the Run inadvertently revealing: as always,
Rossdale's aspirations don't quite jibe with his natural skills, and to hear him deny his gifts is fascinating even if it falls short of being compelling.