Gavin Rossdale is good at giving directions: “The only way out is through,” he sings, pointedly, in the first single from Bush’s new album, Man on the Run.

When he picked up the Bush banner again a few years ago after having left it alone for the better part of a decade to pursue a solo career. Fans were receptive to the directions he pursued in the interim, but what they really wanted was to have a chance to welcome back the group that had gone 6-times platinum with their debut album, 1994’s Sixteen Stone.

The return of Bush with The Sea of Memories in 2011 found an audience eager for that return to one of rock’s most distinctive signature sounds, as their comeback single, “The Sound of Winter,” reached the top of Billboard’s rock and alternative charts. Their second post-reformation project, Man on the Run, continues to find the band no longer running from the sound that made them famous, but embracing it, while adding distinctly 21st century wrinkles.

Still, Rossdale is perfectly aware that the pop landscape into which they’ve returned is not one in which rock is necessarily the dominant cultural force. Man on the Run hardly ever slows down to a trot, much less a stroll — it’s virtually ballad-free.

“Having been inspired by being off the road, I felt that it had to be a high-energy record,” Rossdale says. “It has these fantastic crowd moments; it’s probably the record where I most considered what the songs would be like in the live arena much as on CD. I wanted to make sure that any of those songs could compete with any of our best songs on the set list in terms of place in the set.