The famously photogenic lead singer and songwriter of the British rock band Bush is sitting in a tony restaurant in Soho, digging into a tastefully arranged slab of red meat. It's an interesting spectacle: Beefcake devouring beefsteak while airing his beefs about contemporary music.

"It all seems so superficial and vacuous," Rossdale continues. "I want the interesting kids to form bands and talk about their rites of passage. I want them to put Holden Caulfield in a band and have him write lyrics."

Rossdale's own brand of Caulfieldesque angst has served Bush -- whose other members are guitarist Nigel Pulsford, bassist Dave Parsons and drummer Robin Goodridge -- well. Debut album Sixteen Stone (1994) sold more than 7 million copies, even though some critics dismissed Bush's guitar-based, distortion-heavy rock as watered-down grunge. 1996's Razorblade Suitcase sold in excess of 5 million.

On Bush's new album, The Science of Things, which hit stores Oct. 26, Rossdale maintains his flair for the sort of pensive self-expression that fans call soul-searching and detractors navel-gazing. But he also turns his ambivalent eyes toward the world around him.

Rossdale says that one of the album's big themes is communication, or its absence. But he has mixed feelings about certain modern communication forms such as the Internet, the subject of one new song, Jesus Online.

"Jesus Online is about trying to maintain some kind of spiritual awareness in this age of technology," says Rossdale. "We're bombarded with images that tell us we're not good enough without the right car or the right girlfriend. For a world that's moving ahead, there's an incredible lack of self-confidence."

Nonetheless, the members of Bush and their label, Trauma Records, decided to capitalize on the power of the Internet. In September, the new album's first single, The Chemistry Between Us -- a major hit on modern-rock radio -- went on sale as an MP3 file, for a fee of 99 cents.

After a dispute, Bush has signed a new multiyear deal with Trauma. "As soon as we sat down in a room and looked at each other, we realized we were like family," Rossdale says.

Rossdale is more evasive in discussing the status of his multiyear relationship with Gwen Stefani, lead singer of No Doubt. Though Stefani lends backing vocals to the new album's Space Travel, rumors have cropped up that the couple's romance has cooled. Asked if they're still an item, Rossdale coyly says, "I think so -- sometimes. But she is amazing. That girl is amazing."

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