by David Sprague
November 2001
Although it’s tough to imagine him coming right out and quoting from the Twisted Sister songbook, the hard-edged tone of Golden State makes it clear that Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale has returned to “I wanna rock!” mode. The electronic sheen and sophisticated maneuverings of the band’s last couple of outings have been swept away, replaced — on songs like the dark, doomy “Hurricane” — by the crunching post-grunge guitar that characterized Bush’s earliest efforts. Despite the hazy optimism evoked by the disc’s title, Golden State is pretty darn bleak at times, thanks to the microphone-as-therapist musings that Rossdale imparts on inward-looking tracks like “Headful of Ghosts” and “Reasons.” Yes, he still manages to snap out of his fugue state often enough to get his sensitive-sex-god mojo working now and again — most successfully on the purring “My Engine Is with You” — but more often, Rossdale comes across as the angry young man who’s begun to recognize that he’s not all that young anymore. That’s a tough line to straddle, but for now at least, it makes that rage resonate a little more strongly.