Sat. Oct. 15

avin Rossdale has not been dormant over the past decade. Nor has he been a recluse. The once-and-again frontman for Bush recorded with a group called Institute, released a solo album, played a demon opposite Keanu Reeves in “Constantine,” married Gwen Stefani and had two sons.
     But he wasn’t in the kind of spotlight he was in during Bush’s mid-late ‘90s heyday. 
    “People had an uncanny way of consistently telling me how I’d let them down,” said Rossdale, on the phone from Michigan. “If I went to get coffee, if I went to get gas, if I bought paint at a paint store, it’d be like, ‘Dude, where’s the band? Dude, what’s happening?’ It was a consistent reminder, daily, almost comical. I was getting some of these girls saying, ‘You’re our favorite band, but we’ve never seen you play.’”
    Now, they can. Last month, Bush co-founders, singer-songwriter-guitarist Rossdale and drummer Robin Goodridge, joined with new guitarist Chris Traynor and bassist Corey Britz and released the band’s fifth CD, “The Sea of Memories.” And they are on an extensive club tour that stops for a soldout show at House of Blues Saturday. (Which means you’ll have to visit some ticket “re-seller” or a friendly fella out on Lansdowne Street before the show and pay just a bit more than face.)
    “I was trying to move mountains and I found a way,” Rossdale said of re-forming Bush, fleshing out the band, and recording with producer Bob Rock.
   Playing clubs might seem a big step down from the post-grunge band’s arena-rock peak, but Rossdale, 45, won’t have any of that thinking.
    “It’s far more authentic and correct for this time,” Rossdale said. “It would be wrong for us to attempt to try and play arenas. It’s about re-launching the band and connecting with the fans, and I don’t know how you do that in a cavernous place. There’s something very magical about playing these large clubs. You look out and there’s a sea of people. It looks massive and it feels like 100,000 ‘cause it’s so intense. The bands I looked up to never played arenas. My favorite bands never made it to arenas.”
    Bush has never been a big critical favorite, being tagged as a British Nirvana-lite following their smash hit debut CD, “Sixteen Stone.” Recently, Entertainment Weekly snarked that the new album “adds exactly zero entries to the totally awesome Bush greatest-hits album that doesn't exist yet.”
     “One mistake I made in my past: In my attempt to impress my critics I’d try to understand what [they thought] was wrong with the band,” Rossdale said. “But I rectified it. I made the audience who love Bush become my muse, my focus. Why would you go toward the negative? Why wouldn’t you go toward the positive? So you imagine the faces of the people in the crowd that were wowed by the band. I kept them in mind when I would write a song.
   “I could only entertain songs that could displace or go up against ‘Comedown’ or “Machinehead.’ Or else there’s no point. Then you are really purely a nostalgia act my fear of being that was so great, that I just made sure I wrote the best songs I ever could. That’s the only way to remain relevant in your niche.” 
    Themes of resilience, perseverance and love course through the disc. “Let’s walk through the fire together,” Rossdale sings in “The Sound of Winter.”  “The bleeding of love, the silent escape/You’ve got to hang onto yourself.”
    “This [reformation] seemed to come with much support from my world,” Rossdale said, “and it was pretty strange. It’s a vindication, which is something I’d never even thought about. Anyone that seeks vindication starts out from a bitter place. But I want to think it’s out of vindication from a place of hope.”
    Rossdale works in the hard rock field and Stefani is more in the pop-dance realm. They communicate, but keep their musical lives mostly apart.
    “I think it’s way sexier to be separate about stuff like that,” he said. “Being too needy and vulnerable is not so appealing. Nothing makes more sense than showing off to your partner: ‘Oh yeah, I wrote this honey.’ You want her to go, ‘That’s awesome, I’m so proud of you.’ She understands every step of the way – the shows, the commitment, the being away, reviews, everything. It’s real good fun if you get a killer review to leave it out somewhere. I plan to leave a few key reviews lying around places.”

It's an early show likely starting at 6 with Filter, then Chevelle, then Bush - all done by 10:30 when gay disco kicks in.

(This is an expanded version of a story that ran in the Boston Herald, www.bostonherald.com.)

15 Lansdowne St., 888-693-BLUE www.houseofblues.com