Eight of Bush’s 14 songs at Melbourne’s John Cain Arena came from albums released between 2020 and 2025, revealing a set built less around nostalgia than the emotional territory Gavin Rossdale is writing about now.
by Paul Cashmere
Bush opened their John Cain Arena show in Melbourne with Everything Zen, but the real statement was made by what came next. Eight of the 14 songs in the set came from Bush albums released between 2020 and 2025, making this less a greatest hits performance than a portrait of where Gavin Rossdale and Bush are creatively in 2026.
That distinction matters for Bush whose catalogue is dominated by songs that became part of the soundtrack of the 1990s. A conventional nostalgia set could have leaned heavily on Sixteen Stone and Razorblade Suitcase, with Swallowed an obvious candidate given its enduring recognition in Australia.
Instead, Swallowed was absent.
The decision gave the Melbourne performance a different shape. Bush still acknowledged their history, but the emphasis was on a catalogue that has continued to develop rather than one frozen in its most commercially familiar period.
Everything Zen was the perfect opening concession to history. The first song from Sixteen Stone immediately established the lineage, its familiar guitar figure connecting a 2026 Bush audience to the band that broke internationally in 1994.
Then came Quicksand from The Kingdom, a much deeper selection that shifted the conversation away from the past.
That pattern continued. The Land Of Milk And Honey from I Beat Loneliness, released in 2025, placed Rossdale’s current songwriting alongside the older material rather than treating it as an opening act for the classics. All Things Must Change, Heavy Is The Ocean, Human Sand and More Than Machines, all from The Art Of Survival, extended that idea.
The numbers are revealing. Five songs came from Sixteen Stone, four from The Art Of Survival, two from I Beat Loneliness, two from The Kingdom and one from The Science Of Things. The set therefore reached across more than three decades, but its centre of gravity was firmly contemporary.
Rossdale has previously told Noise11 that his songwriting is concerned with “the human journey” and how people deal with the inevitable challenges of life. He described I Beat Loneliness as a record dealing with vulnerability, grief and resilience, rather than material concerns. That perspective gives the Melbourne setlist an emotional continuity that is easy to miss when the songs are simply viewed as album cuts.
The newer material does not sound like Bush trying to escape the sound established in the 1990s. There is still the muscular guitar, the tension between restraint and release, and Rossdale’s unmistakable voice. The difference is that the songs belong to a different stage of his life.
The contrast was most clearly defined by Glycerine.
Rossdale performed the Sixteen Stone ballad alone, stripped back to an acoustic-style presentation. Rather than attempting to recreate the studio recording, the 2026 version allowed the song to exist as something he could now look back on without being trapped by it.
The effect was striking. A song written more than 30 years ago was being presented by a man who has lived with its meaning, its history and its audience for decades. The stopped-back arrangement gave Glycerine a new context without denying what it had become.
Machinehead provided the other major reminder of Bush’s heritage. Its riff remains instantly physical, and in a set otherwise weighted towards recent material, its position was less about nostalgia than recognition. The same was true of Little Things and, ultimately, Comedown.
The Chemicals Between Us offered another bridge between eras. From 1999’s The Science Of Things, its electronic pulse and industrial edge demonstrated that Bush’s catalogue has always contained more than one version of the band.
Flowers On A Grave provided another connection between Rossdale and the audience, with the singer leaving the stage area and moving through the crowd before returning to the performance. He told the audience, “I love doing that, it’s one of my favourite parts of the show!”
The current Bush line-up of Rossdale, Chris Traynor, Corey Britz and Nik Hughes handled the material with the weight required by the older songs and the precision needed by the newer ones.
By the time More Than Machines pushed the show towards its conclusion, the argument of the setlist was clear. Bush did not need to abandon their history to prove they remain a contemporary band. They simply needed to give the present enough space.
Comedown closed the night, bringing the journey back to where it began without turning the entire performance into a retrospective.
For a band more than three decades into its career, that may be the more revealing choice. Bush can still play the songs that established their name, but in Melbourne, Gavin Rossdale was more interested in showing what those years produced.
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
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- BUSH by Mary Boukouvalas
Full Bush Setlist, John Cain Arena Melbourne, 25 September 2026
Everything Zen – Sixteen Stone (1994)
Quicksand – The Kingdom (2020)
The Land Of Milk And Honey – I Beat Loneliness (2025)
Machinehead – Sixteen Stone (1994)
All Things Must Change – The Art Of Survival (2022)
The Chemicals Between Us – The Science Of Things (1999)
Little Things – Sixteen Stone (1994)
Heavy Is The Ocean – The Art Of Survival (2022)
Glycerine – Sixteen Stone (1994)
Human Sand – The Art Of Survival (2022)
Flowers On A Grave – The Kingdom (2020)
I Beat Loneliness – I Beat Loneliness (2025)
More Than Machines – The Art Of Survival (2022)
Comedown – Sixteen Stone (1994)
2026 Tour Dates
Thursday 17 September, Auckland, Spark Arena
Sunday 20 September, Brisbane, Riverstage
Wednesday 23 September, Sydney, Hordern Pavilion
Friday 25 September, Melbourne, John Cain Arena REVIEWED
Sunday 27 September, Adelaide, AEC Theatre
Tuesday 29 September, Perth, HPC
https://www.destroyalllines.com/tours/bush-shinedown
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