Personnel: Jony Rockstar, Aidan Love (programming).
Audio Mixers: Clive Langer; Alan Winstanley; Bush.
Audio Remasterer: Howie Weinberg.
On THE SCIENCE OF THINGS, Bush manages to provide a link to the sound of the band's previous albums without stagnating in a post-grunge mire of hard-rock cliches. Old-school fans needn't worry, Bush's trademark style is well represented here, as on the grinding, piledriver riffs of "English Fire" and that vaunted, Nirvana-derived loud-soft-loud dynamic shift on the alternately foreboding and explosive "Dead Meat."
There's a distinct musical progression here as well, though. With its looped-sounding drum track, "The Chemicals Between Us" nods to electronica production values. "Letting the Cables Sleep" and "40 Miles From the Sun" are effectively pensive ballads that provide a valuable respite from the band's unrelenting sonic attack, though the songs' underlying darkness keeps them from seeming anomalous. If any further doubts lingered about Bush's refusal to be pigeonholed, there's even a guest vocal turn from No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani.
Professional Reviews
Q (12/99, p.132) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...leading big-riff hard-and-heavy [music] into a new age of howling and roaring about inner pain....the band pulls out a plethora of enlivening noises and notions...main songsmith Gavin Rosedale finds his way into the megawatt opera..."
CMJ (11/8/99, p.3) - "...a blitzkrieg of slashing guitar lines topped by Gavin's warm, raspy pipes....Bush has finally made a science of its lingering, catchy rock."
