20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Clockwork Angels

DAY NINETEEN: Clockwork Angels, running time 66:04, released June 12, 2012

Listening to Clockwork Angels, one gets the feeling that Rush enjoyed writing and recording this album.  Unlike Snakes and Arrows, there’s a sense of exploration and joy on this effort, with shifting moods, exciting riffs, some great hooks and plenty of moments that challenge each member of the band.  It’s easily the band’s best effort since Test for Echo, and quite possibly their best album since the early 80s.

The opening “Caravan” immediately provides the hook and infectious chorus so often lacking in later Rush material, setting the stage with the universal chorus of “I can’t stop thinking big,” and “BU2B” provides an exciting opening riff and a memorable refrain. 

The album gets bogged down a bit with the unnecessary effects and interludes.   There’s hardly a guitar part that isn’t bathed in effects, filling up the entire stereo spectrum, and beginnings and endings of songs are extended with traces of vocal and guitar parts swept with ethereal effects, sometimes serving to give the listener a respite from the onslaught of sound, other times doing nothing but prolonging what should have been a much shorter effort.  This isn’t Rush of 1981, after all; they are not at their prolific best.  An album of 50 minutes would have been preferred.

A silly megaphone effect is employed on two successive songs: the title track, and again at 1:55 of “The Anarchist” before going back to a terrific chorus.  As with many recent Rush songs, too often they write great parts of songs without writing an effective piece from beginning to end.  “Carnies” is an example of a track whose verse is a complete mess, but whose other sections work extremely well.

“The Halo Effect” is a complete song – probably the album’s best – melodic from the start, accessible, with universal lyrics, and one of the few times in recent memory that a Rush song ends exactly when it should at just over three minutes.  “The Wreckers” is another gem, perhaps going on a minute too long (particularly at the bridge at 2:50), but again a very good verse and chorus with a contagious guitar intro.

“Headlong Flight” is a blistering seven minutes of pure joy, employing brief allusions to Rush of yesteryear, including riffs from “Bastille Days” and “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.”  It’s a powerhouse that I would expect to be included in any future tours the band might make, though I wonder if Clockwork Angels might be Rush’s swan-song.  It wouldn’t be a bad way to cap off a forty-year career.

As with so many hard-rock albums these days, Rush squashed the sound too much in the mastering process.  You can practically hear the limiter pumping at 1:10 of “Seven Cities of Gold” as Geddy reaches for the high notes.  I also noticed it at 2:43 of “Carnies.”  Not a preferred production technique, but it’s unfortunately been the trend of heavy rock music for the past decade.  Listen to A Farewell to Kings back to back with Clockwork Angels and you’ll hear just how much production has changed since the 70s, and not all for the better.

“The Garden” ends the album with an touching summary of what one takes away after a long life of ups and downs.  And then…it says it again and again, for almost seven minutes.  But oh well.  Such is the reality of an ambitious band in the CD age (though we’re almost out of that age, I would suspect).  

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to Caress of Steel, a very weird way to end a twenty-day journey.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Snakes and Arrows

DAY EIGHTEEN: Snakes and Arrows, running time 62:45, released May 1, 2007

Snakes and Arrows has been compared with the Rush recordings of the late 70s.  It is anything but.  Four huge distinctions: the busier, grungier production; the less melodic vocal parts over meterless poetry; the minor-key leanings; and the overall length of the recording.  Now, that doesn’t necessarily suggest that it’s a poor effort, and there is a younger generation of Rush fans who love this album.  For me, Snakes and Arrows is a laborious listening experience, like wading through an endless sea of mud.  Sure, it feels kind of cool during those first few steps, all squishy and thick, but before too long, your calves hurt and your toenails are full of gook.

My major gripe is the minor key drudgery of the songs.  So dark, so monotone, so unsingable, one after another after another.  Nearly every song begins and ends in a minor key, each sounding much like the one that preceded it.  As I’ve stated before, I’m a melody guy for the most part, but the lyrics here – like many of those on Vapor Trails – once again feel like they were jerry-rigged into the songs; meterless, rhymeless poetry that doesn’t lend itself well to tunes.  Try singing the verses to “Armor and Sword.”  If you can do it, you are a better man that I (or maybe just a bigger Rush fan).  And the verses of “The Way the Wind Blows” are an absolute mess, undermining a fine chorus.  Now, nothing says you can’t have lyrics that are difficult to sing and that don’t lend themselves to traditional melodic phrasing, and Rush seems to have embraced this technique as of late, but for me, it simply doesn’t provide for a pleasurable listening experience.

The album starts off strong with “Far Cry” and there’s enough good stuff happening in “Spindrift” for me to recommend that song (I love the simplicity of the musical theme and the chorus), but even this song loses its way during a wretched bridge with Geddy backing himself up on vocals (a technique he employs way too often).  That’s about as much as I’d care to return to if I was compiling a best-of Rush mix tape.   Rush’s nineteenth album is clearly a superior effort than Vapor Trails in terms of production, but as far as the songs go, I actually prefer the earlier release.

Snakes and Arrows features three instrumentals, which isn’t a bad idea for an aging band known for its virtuoso instrumentalists.  If they worked at it, Rush could actually make an album entirely of instrumentals.  But here, they’re just okay, lacking the melodic themes of a “YYZ” or even a “Where’s My Thing,” serving more as interludes between vocal songs than as features.  “The Main Monkey Business” goes on forever without going anywhere, but “Hope” is a nice Lifeson piece, again aimless, but short and pleasant.

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 20, Rush’s latest, Clockwork Angels, which means that in two days I’ll be ending my journey with the polarizing Caress of Steel.  That outta be interesting.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: A Farewell to Kings

DAY SEVENTEEN: A Farewell to Kings, running time 37:13, released September 1, 1977

2112 was a very good album with great musicianship, but the compositions were harmonically and rhythmically basic.  Not so on Rush's followup, A Farewell to Kings.  Here, the band pushes the envelope, shifting moods with the effective use of tuned percussion and synthesizers, juggling time signatures and producing one of its finest albums to date.

A Farewell to Kings is all about creating atmosphere, and it often takes its time getting there.  Lifeson’s classical guitar that opens the album brings to mind Old England, and the guitar swells that open “Xanadu” evoke mystery and wonder (and lead to my second-favorite Lifeson guitar part of all-time at 1:48).  It takes a full five minutes before Geddy sings a note, and it’s this deliberate pace that works so well on the album.  Despite the album’s brief length, Rush is in no hurry to get anywhere, each track transpiring all in good time.  The marriage of tuned percussion and synthesizer at various points (5:59 of “Xanadu,” for instance) work well, and the musicianship is stunningly good throughout.

Side two opens with a radio-friendly tune (I can only imagine the relief Mercury Records must have felt upon hearing it), “Closer to the Heart,” with its universal lyrics and terrific solo by Lifeson, and “Cinderella Man” is another gem (the cheesy use of panning during the guitar solo notwithstanding) penned by Lee.  Both of these tunes are better than any of the shorter tracks on 2112 with the possible exception of ”A Passage to Bangkok.”  The band had grown in leaps and bounds in one year.  Even the ballad “Madrigal” works beautifully and benefits from brevity, something Rush should have considered with “Rivendell” just a few years prior, and it also works better than the ballad “Tears” from 2112.

The album ends with another ambitious effort, “Cygnus X-1,” and once again the pacing is superb.  After a brief spoken introduction, it isn’t until minute five that Geddy begins to sing.  The song rocks at that point, only to recede at 7:15, building the tension required to highlight the song’s inevitable, blistering conclusion. The strummed guitar chords at the song's end leave the listener with a sense of mystery and suggest the song's sequel, ”Hemispheres."

In short, A Farewell to Kings may not be the album you want to listen to in the car between errands after work, but if you’ve got some time to sit back and take it all in, you might not find a better Rush album.  It’s likely going to be number two on my list.

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 19, Snakes and Arrows, one of those efforts that newer Rush fans worship.  We’ll see what this old guy thinks of it.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Roll the Bones

DAY SIXTEEN: Rush, Roll the Bones, running time 48:04, released September 3, 1991

For me, Roll the Bones is the sister of Presto, much like Hemispheres and A Farewell to Kings, Signals and Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows and Hold Your Fire, etc.  It seems like Rush tends to pursue a sound for two albums and then moves onto new endeavors.  Here, they continue the more prominent guitar sound (albeit trebly, crunchy guitar without much meat to it) with keyboards providing a significant bedding; it’s not yet the harder-edged full sound of Counterparts, but it’s getting there. 

Gone are the days of silence between the notes.  On Roll the Bones, there’s always something filling in the soundscape – a droning keyboard, the long ring of a snare’s reverb, an overdubbed guitar – a trend that started with Signals (and I’m not sure has stopped yet), and this the only part of the production that drives me a bit bonkers.  A little more dynamic range and an occasional moment of silence would have been welcome.

But this is a minor quibble.  Roll the Bones is an excellent album.  There are Rush fans who hate this era of the band, but for me this album is smack dab in the middle of Rush’s second golden era (the first starting at 2112 and ending at Moving Pictures).  You’ve got good melodies over a rocking, upbeat sound, mostly in major keys (something anathema to the band on Snakes and Arrows), but the biggest asset is Peart’s accessible, relatable lyrics.  Yes, he makes the lyrical sin of rhyming “chance,” “dance” and “romance” (seriously – what’s next?  Cool, fool and school?  Love, dove and above?), but then he throws out gems like “Distance is a long-range filter/Memory a flickering light.”  Here, Peart writes of fate, youth, chance, randomness, circumstances, love, dreams – all relatable stuff for a band that used to write about black holes, monsters and battling gods.

The rap in the title track is a lot of fun, and the band played it for many years on tour, almost to the point of being overplayed (much like “Dreamline” and “Force Ten”), but here too Alex mucks up the rap by playing lead guitar over it.  Silly.  “Bravado” and “Heresy” are fantastic slower songs with terrific messages, and the chorus of “Ghost of a Chance” is as close to adult contemporary that the band has ever come (and you know what?  It’s fricking good).  Rush wisely limits the album's length to 48 minutes plus, a full four minutes less than Presto.  Even still, the album loses some of its momentum with the final two tracks, “Neurotica” and “You Bet Your Life.”  Still decent songs, however, and when push comes to shove, Roll the Bones is on par with Presto, which for me means definitely in the top ten albums that Rush has produced.

Oddly, selections from this album have been hard to come by live.  Only five tracks were played on the Roll the Bones tour, and since then, only three have made it into the rotation.  I would love to hear “Heresy” or “The Big Wheel” live – something other than the first three tracks – but as usual Rush leans on familiar ways.

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 5, A Farewell to Kings.  This album had me mesmerized when my brother purchased what I remember to be a cutout of this 1977 release.  We’ll see if it still has the magic.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Signals

DAY FIFTEEN: Rush, Signals, running time 43:12, released September 9, 1982

The change between Moving Pictures to Signals is enormous, the latter providing a richer texture with more keyboards, a fuller sound and an electric violin to boot.  Even Geddy’s voice is different here, as he uses his lower register throughout and employs heavy reverb and delay.  I was expecting not to like Signals very much, and to be sure, it falls flat on a few tunes, but it held a few pleasant surprises for me. 

The first two tracks should be surprises to no one.  The album begins with Geddy’s low synth – talk about “signaling” a change in the band’s direction – and continues with Neil Peart’s best lyric ever in “Subdivisions.”  “The Analog Kid” is among the band’s best ever, offering a brief return to a heavier guitar sound before heading back to the rich keyboard sound of “Chemistry,” a good track that struggles mightily to overcome its cheesy lyrics (credited to all three band members!  Not sure three heads were better than one in this case).  “Digital Man” is a great track that would sound right at home on Grace Under Pressure, with Alex’s crunchy chord-driven guitar part.  Here, the band employs keyboards just the right amount, not as a lead instrument but as a texture-adding element, even contributing a rhythmic pulse during the chorus, a technique used on the next track as well, “The Weapon.”  This song that starts strong before laboring about half-way through, especially during the instrumental section that offers dated keyboard patches and little forward momentum (a sign of what was to come on some of the songs from the band’s next release).

Just as the album begins to drag a bit, “New World Man” does for Signals what “Kid Gloves” does for Grace Under Pressure, breathing new life and energy into the mix, with a running time of less than four minutes (and serving as Rush's highest-charting single ever).  I’d never been a fan of “Losing It,” but today I really appreciated the verses that dance over the initial 5/8 rhythm.  Lovely stuff.  It’s also cool that Lifeson was willing to share soloing duties with Ben Mink’s electric violin, but like “The Weapon,” this song loses steam about half-way through.  The last track, “Countdown,” is a bit of time capsule, both musically and lyrically, and for me it was never one of Rush’s stronger tracks, as it meanders through too many different sections without offering enough of a hook.

When I saw my first Rush concert in October of 1982, they played every song from Signals except “Losing It.”   In recent years, “Analog Kid” has made a welcomed comeback, and “New World Man” and “Digital Man” have been played as well within the last decade or so.

All in all, a good recording, probably on par with Grace Under Pressure, though I think I favor the latter just a bit more.

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 14, Roll the Bones, as Rush throws its hat into the world of rap.  Get ready…