Destined for rock scrapyard

by Scott Albright

Daily Lobo

Institute - the side project of Bush's Gavin Rossdale - has a new album, Distort Yourself, which reeks of broken-down technological junk thrown into the scrapyard of bad rock.

Songs like "Information Age" give the impression that instead of using a guitar, the band decided to connect an old defibrillator into a broken fax machine to create a painful mixture of high-pitched twangs.

The song "Wasteland" starts off promising with a nice rhythmic flow, but then shifts back into the same rainy-day pop that anyone could have made in the middle of a Valium-induced episode of inspiration.

Some of the bass lines make the head bob slightly and the solo vocals would impress a sleepy dreamer. At least it's good resting music. A good surround sound system gives the bass a hardcore thump that revives the drowsy vocals.

Whatever the message is, it doesn't carry itself all too well amid the funked-out bass and dilapidated guitar chords. The only message interpretable to the realist is that successful musicians live in a world of shredded souls they let leak into the gutter of despair. Misery loves company. But why promote it? Music lovers need optimism too.

Although the use of studio equipment was of good enough quality to make a few echo effects, the overall sound doesn't stimulate the senses to their fullest. Sure, this album will probably be played out on mainstream pop radio. It's a perfect transitional piece of bittersweet noise that will work wonders for the makers of Prozac, just in time for the cold, dark nights of autumn.