Rossdale's new band has its roots in Bush
Institute
Paradise, Boston, Massachusetts
August 29, 2005
by Marc Hirsh

[photo taken by Marc Hirsh]

originally published in The Boston Globe, August 31, 2005

It’s been nearly a dozen years since Gavin Rossdale stole a Neil Young riff, called it “Everything Zen” and graduated from clubs to amphitheatres and arenas as Bush became one of the biggest bands of the latter half of the 1990s. If it was a bit of a shock to see him return to the realm of mere mortals with his new band Institute at the Paradise on Monday, he eased the dissonance by adjusting quite nicely to the venue.

There may have been a deliberate method to playing the more intimate setting. Institute’s debut Distort Yourself won’t be released until September 13, which practically guaranteed that the audience was composed of Bush fans unfamiliar with any of Rossdale’s new songs. With expectations adjusted accordingly, the band was able to focus on introducing people to their material, playing all but one track from the new album.

It didn’t hurt that Institute sounds almost exactly like Rossdale’s old group. The singer’s throaty yelp is still the same as it was a decade ago, and new songs like “The Heart Of Your Love” and “Boom Box” possessed the same moody drive and pop-grunge howl that let Bush dominate the airwaves way back when. Even with three new musicians behind him, “Everything Zen” and “Machine Head” came out sounding almost identical to the originals. If Rossdale had taken this band on the road as a reconstituted Bush, it’s possible that nobody would have batted an eye.

But Rossdale has chosen instead to start over, though he certainly didn’t pretend to have learned nothing from his megastar past (and husband-of-a-megastar present). Even with his apparent comfort in a mid-sized club, some of his stage moves during “The People That We Love” and “Information Age” were outsized enough to work in the stadiums that he used to play. More importantly, “Boom Box” and the slow, pinging “Ambulances” showed that he remembers a thing or two about how to construct effective crowd-pleasers. Institute could easy have been a vehicle for ego gratification, but for now, Rossdale seems to be content simply being a singer in a band.