Archive – Gig review: Bush at London Scala (2011)

Live review: Bush at London Scala, Monday, November 21, 2011

“WE seemed to make it somewhere else but here,” Gavin Rossdale says halfway through Bush’s return to his home town, London.

“I don’t know why that happens. I just do what they tell me.”

Behind me, a couple from Bournemouth – well, mainly the female half – are almost wetting themselves. Bush is her favourite band and she has never seen them live. Sadly for Rossdale, there aren’t enough like her in Old Blighty.

As a sort of commercial Nirvana with Rossdale’s Hollywood looks an added bonus, the quartet’s 1994 debut Sixteen Stone went six times platinum in the United States. When rap metal replaced post-grunge, their success petered out and Rossdale swapped the charts for the gossip columns. He married Gwen Stefani and, bizarrely, was revealed in Boy George’s biography to have had a homosexual affair with Marilyn as a youngster.

Anyway…

When Rossdale tells tonight’s audience, each member of which has paid £40 to have this intimate audience with the reanimated band, that he “has been hanging out to do Bush again”, it’s a rather telling statement. Rossdale and drummer  Robin Goodridge are “doing” Bush, with guitarist Nigel Pulsford and bassist Dave Parsons replaced by Chris Traynow and Corey Britz respectively.

There are two parts of the battle with a partial reunion.

One is the new material and thankfully, surprisingly and happily Sea Of Memories is a strong return which keeps the brooding, heavy torch of Bush’s music burning. Lead-off song “Sound Of Winter” is as catchy as can be and others which get an airing here  – including “All My Life” and “Baby Come Home” – are top notch fare.

In introducing “All Night Doctors”, Rossdale recalls how he “grew up 10 minutes from here” and “there was a lot of self-medicating”. He then looks up to the balcony and adds “sorry mum”.

One newie, which I think is “Be Still My Love” – whichever is performed with an oboe – is disastrously out of key and one of the worst live performances by a big name rock act I have ever seen.

Which brings us to the second challenge  for a partially re-formed band: can they cut it live?

There are times when I don’t think Traynor and Britz deliver quite the punch their predecessors did. Some of Bush’s tastier riffs require a degree of brutality; the hirsute Traynor certainly doesn’t look brutal when his expression of loudness is to tip-toe backwards while playing.

But reviewing video footage of this performance reinforces the suggestion it was pretty damn impressive – even though Rossdale muttered “fuck off – jesus!” at the end of “Everything Zen”.

He sings most of one new song from the absolute middle of the pit and makes up for his laconic stage raps by making as much physical contact with audience members as possible. One lad on the tube afterwards says he tried to escape a Rossdale hug but was pinned down by the star with a mid-Atlantic accent.

The encore is an innovative, staccato “Come Together”, old favourite “Glycerine” and the soaring “Comedown” – which actually does hit the mark as the highlight of the night.

This is a band with a formidable, radio-seducing back repertoire and a handy new record. In America, Bush are already classic rock. But just a few miles from Shepherds Bush, which gave them their name, they’re still a little alternative.

If they can win over more Brits the second time around, their third reunion is going to be massive….