London, UK · post-grunge · alternative rock · rock

Bush

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Gavin Rossdale's post-grunge outfit, whose mid-'90s singles have aged into genuine festival-crowd catnip — 'Glycerine' and 'Machinehead' still land like it's 1995.

Bush trace back to November 1991, when Gavin Rossdale met guitarist Nigel Pulsford at a Wembley show, bonding over a shared love of Big Black, the Fall, Pixies and the Velvet Underground. The pair formed a band first called Future Primitive, later joined by bassist Dave Parsons and drummer Robin Goodridge, and took the name Bush before signing to a label through manager Rob Kahane in 1993.

Their debut, Sixteen Stone, was recorded in early 1994 but initially rejected by Disney executives at Hollywood Records, leaving the band doing manual labour before Interscope stepped in to release it. Airplay of "Everything Zen" on Los Angeles station KROQ built momentum, and the singles "Comedown," "Glycerine," "Little Things" and "Machinehead" carried Sixteen Stone to multi-platinum US sales, the loud-quiet dynamics and heavy guitar tone placing the London band alongside American post-grunge acts of the period.

A rights dispute with an unrelated 1970s Canadian band called Bush forced the album to be released there under the name BushX, a workaround still in place for the 1996 follow-up, Razorblade Suitcase, which reached number one on the Billboard 200.

The band followed with further albums through the 1990s, including one produced by Steve Albini, before splitting in 2002. Rossdale revived Bush in 2010, and the group has released six albums since, among them The Sea of Memories, Man on the Run, Black and White Rainbows, The Kingdom, The Art of Survival and I Beat Loneliness, with mid-1990s singles remaining the core of their live sets.

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post-grungealternative rockrock