Every music movement has its pioneers and its parasites. It was Bush's grave misfortune to be viewed as the ultimate bandwagon-jumping opportunists of the early 90s grunge scene, with the London band being dismissed in their native land as essentially little more than a Nirvana tribute band.

This didn't stop them attaining stadium-filling status in America before splitting when grunge's star waned, and after a 10-year hiatus the group reformed last year with a fifth studio album, The Sea of Memories. Reformed is perhaps a kind word to use: only singer/guitarist Gavin Rossdale and drummer Robin Goodridge remain from the original lineup.

Nearing 50, the pony-tailed Rossdale looks lean and muscular and Bush's music remains similarly sinewy and dextrous. In the rush to condemn their ersatz qualities, it was easy to overlook the fact that they are a proficient, sporadically thrilling live rock band: new tracks All My Life and The Sound of Winter are the equal of, say, anything off the last two Foo Fighters albums.

Bush's failing was always their desperate craving for a depth and profundity that their music never attained, and big US hits such as Everything Zen and Swallowed still sound too studied and knowing to be cathartic. Rossdale is also a changed man: his remark that it is "rilly beautiful to be in London" betrays a decade spent in the LA sun with his wife, Gwen Stefani.

Still, he busts a gut up there tonight, touring the venue's balconies during the Soundgarden-like The Afterlife, importing a buffed angst to Pink Floyd's Breathe, and risking whiplash with a headbanging encore take on the Beatles' Come Together. It's a lot of fun: from being contrived copyists, Bush may just have grown into their own skin.