Bush – Razorblade Suitcase

I think this is a great album. Way different from Sixteen Stone, almost from a different band. All the songs have a different sound to me, and I think the lyrics are interesting.

Bush's most cohesive album and their best. It is without a doubt a Steve Albini recording with his trademark abrasive, band-playing-in-a-room recording technique, and this is good news to those that have the tendency to purchase albums simply because Albini recorded it. Yes, it does come across as an In Utero ripoff with it certainly being much less accessible than their debut, and while not nearly as great as the Nirvana album that it is constantly compared to, its emulation is part of its charm. If we're going to continue calling it a ripoff, then it is also a ripoff of PJ Harvey's amazing second album Rid Of Me. The oddly arranged string portions on the ballad "Straight No Chaser" bring to mind "Man-Sized Sextet," and this is a good thing. It's difficult to imagine these songs being recorded with cleaner production since it seemed like the objective was to write abrasive songs in the first place. The amount of guitar and overdrive in the majority of the songs is enough to make a guitar noise junkie satisfied. Rossdale's dry, monotone, and grating vocals are actually appropriate for these aggressive, dark pop songs; however, don't expect much from the lyrics. But that's not the point. It's an Albini record. Revel in the sound.

It looks as if though its got anything right - Steve Albini as a producer, Cobain-like vocals and all sorts of painful/painfully mediocre lyrical barrage. You have to one thing, though - Albini himself says that he hates some of the bands that he's recording and sometimes he's doing his job simply because he needs something else to work on. I believe that this is the case here - Big Black or Jesus Lizard this ain't. While these songs are all over the radio, they sound like something that bands like Nirvana would've rejected instantly. Painfully boring, meaningless lyrics, songs without direction etc. etc. Some of them are about to explode, but it never happens. Just goes on to show that quite often financial success of the particular group/album doesn't mean that the music itself is any good.