4 out of 5

Label: Trauma

Produced by: Steve Albini

Oh, if only little blossoming-music-tastes me knew, when proclaiming Bush as my favorite band, that the dedication would actually persist for the decades to come, lasting past other favorites and various genre diversions.  Stay True, blossoming-music-tastes me.

Razorblade Suitcase is peak Bush: peak grunge; peak cryptic lyrics; peak schmaltz.  It’s sort of their masterpiece, in that it has a string of dazzlingly brilliant tracks, singles and otherwise, though those same ‘peak’ indulgences prevent it from being perfect.

Lead Gavin’s handsome-frontman identity had skyrocketed, at the same time that Nirvana-ripoff criticisms and rejection by the UK press (along the lines of Why Aren’t You Oasis?) were in constant play.  The ripoff tag was an interesting one, as a million and one bands played the grunge card post Cobain, I think Bush just had the misfortune of being one of the first to pull off the combo of being pinup worthy and stadium-seat selling.

And while there’s the chuckle that Gavin and crew’s response to the comments was to grab In Utero’s producer (Steve Albini) and have the artwork of their sophomore album designed by the guy who worked on Surfer Rosa, I also think – and remember thinking at the time – that the group didn’t turn in a Glycerine / Sixteen Stone carbon copy – Razorblade Suitcase is a pretty dense and dirty album; the kind of rawness you don’t often hear on a major label.  Which isn’t to say it isn’t completely mainstream, but the combination of Albini’s production intuitions and Rossdale’s open-ended song writing leads to some really fascinating flourishes: the nigh-riffless momentum of Insect Kin, or how Mouth perpetually wanders around a structure until landing on its refrain.  While we end up.getting two pretty boy tracks (Bonedriven and Straight No Chaser) which use the same discordant strings + guitar trick, and Gavin is in full-on DaDa mode with his lyrics, that the rest of this 13 track, hour plus landmark release is chock full of emotional, sweaty performances, raw, speaker-thumping production, and little touches and variations that steer it quite ahead of its genre peers… it’s pretty damn remarkable.

And it’s a damn good album.