Bush: I Beat Loneliness

Bush was the second band I ever felt like I discovered on my own. Green Day holds the first spot, but Bush was the first band I bought with my own money. I remember flipping through the CD racks at Best Buy and landing on Sixteen Stone. To me, it was near perfection. I know most fans swear by Razorblade Suitcase, but I will die on the hill that Sixteen Stone is THE one.

Nothing beat sliding that disc into a Discman, smashing those foam headphones against my ears, and cranking the volume until it crackled.

Then things shifted. The remix of “Mouth” on the An American Werewolf in Paris soundtrack felt like the start of a darker, more experimental version of Bush. Deconstructed came out. It was moodier. Stranger. More 90s. I kept waiting for the next album to come around and pull me back in. It never really did. Not the next one. Or the one after that. Eventually, Bush just kind of faded from my active rotation.

I Beat Loneliness is the first time in at least a decade, maybe closer to two, where I not only enjoyed a Bush album but genuinely loved it.

The biggest knock is consistency to a fault. The production is thick and a little muddy. Guitars blur together. Tempos rarely shift dramatically. There are not many sharp left turns. As a full album, it can feel sonically uniform.

The songs themselves are good. All of them. Every track lands at least in the “solid” category. That is not something I have been able to say about a Bush record in a long time. If pressed for standouts, “Scars” and “Milk and Honey” probably edge ahead, but this is less about a single breakout and more about sustained quality.

This is arena rock through and through. There are moments that flirt with early Creed style balladry mixed with 90s grunge textures, but it never sinks too deep into sludge. It feels closer to their more straightforward rock efforts than their experimental detours, yet it is not a pure back to basics play either. It sits somewhere in the middle.

For a band pushing thirty years of my fandom, I will absolutely take this. If the next record leans a little harder into the riffs and strips some of the conformity away, they might have something truly special again. For now, this is more than enough.