institute - distort yourself
so, while his wife goes off and conquers the pop world, ex-bush bloke decides to carve out his own new niche in the world of rock, or does he? while bush are supposedly on hiatus (more likely they've realised it's not going to go down to well selling product with the name 'bush' all over it in these embattled times for the current world leader), gavin rossdale teams up with a bunch of alt.rock heavy weights such as chris taynor (helmet), cache tolman (rival schools) and charlie walker (split lip), with production from helmets page hamilton, calls the end result institute and rips off catatonia for the album's cover.
as you can see there is a lot of helmet involvement, ahem, as well as a lot of praise to god as all bar gavin thank god first in their thank you lists.
the music then is heavy modern rock, and at times, rather hard going. while everything sounds in its right place and very impressive, with the welcome deft subtle modern studio tweeks here and there, but being honest, having listened to this album many many times, (the much thanked god, knows i have tried) i still cannot recall a single tune on it. ok, the chorus of opener, 'bullet proof skin', has the overused phrase 'burn baby burn' repeated to fine catchy effect, which incidentally makes you flick through recent editions of ok/heat/nuts celebrity lifestyle magazines to check to see if gavin and gwen have been having marital difficulties, is a fine start to the album. it's just that the opener then sets the scene for the rest of the 14 tracks, with little in the way of sonic variety, the same large processed guitar chords, plenty of out of focus clean guitar lines, the same plodding beat, and general avoidance of anything joyful, means that getting through the whole hour becomes more difficult with each subsequent spin. there are flashes of some self directed irony however, after all you cannot call a massive radio fm rock track track called 'boom box' with a tagline all about 'this boom box needs batteries' without having a laugh surely ?
this aint a bad album, there is plenty of that "big dramatic rock chords crashing around that will sound great when accompanied by some cliched mtv video" styled noise, it's just that does the world need a 'fairly decent rock album' in 2005 when there is so much other stuff out there that makes you glad to be alive while twisting the beast that is rock music into exciting new shapes, as opposed to reviving the sounds of '95. then again, i have heard that the grunge is back, so this will probably be exactly what the doctor of death has ordered for many of the current disenfranchised army.