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defrogCarrying on with the Old Rock Guys theme:
Whenever anyone asks what was the most influential band in my impressionable youth – the one that got me through the hell of high school and whose songs I identified with so strongly it was as if they somehow knew who I was and were writing their songs specifically for me – I don’t have to think about the answer.
It’s Rush.
Seriously. A guy in my high-school drama group lent me a cassette of Moving Pictures, and it blew me away. Then they released their concert album, Exit … Stage Left, which introduced me to their back catalog, which I started collecting. Now that they’re past their 40th year as a band, you’d think I’d have a shelf full of Rush albums.
Well. Not exactly. I confess that Grace Under Pressure was the last Rush album that truly impressed me. Once they’d completed their transformation from epic prog-rock to shiny chrome-plated pristine 80s band that gleamed like the interior of an Imperial spaceship, they more or less stuck with that formula to the point where it was diminishing returns for me – something I’ve chalked up to the fact that as I grew up, the impact had been made and nothing they could do could ever really live up to that, which is my fault, not theirs.
Anyway, every so often they came out with an album that looked like a return to form, but really the closest they ever came was Feedback, which was a covers album of songs that influenced them. Good, but not awesome. So usually when they put out a new record I don’t get my hopes up.
Now they’ve got a new album out – Clockwork Angels – and it is epic. Literally. Apart from being the densest and loudest record I’ve heard this year (apart from Off!, maybe), it’s also a steampunk concept album where all the songs are at least six minutes long. And I might not have taken a chance on it, but then I heard a track on the PA inside HMV.
This very track here.
Now THAT is the Rush song I’ve been waiting to hear since 1984 – heavy riffs, squally guitar solo, epic mythology. Oh yes.
But what about the rest of the album?
Well, quite a bit of it lives up to the expectations of the above track, but I confess it took a second pass to appreciate some of them. I still have to adjust to the fact that Rush does not sound like they did when I was in high school, and that they have a tendency to sound like they’ve taken sections of four different songs and mixed them together into one big song with no attempt to segue smoothly between each section – or so it seems on first listen.
Once you get the hang of it, it works more often than not. There’s some filler, but a lot less of it than more recent albums, and quite a few songs are worth the price of admission alone. So I can say with confidence this is the most excited I’ve been about a Rush album in a long time.
Also, leave it to Rush to have Kevin J. Anderson write a novel based on their concept album. How nerdy can you get? Honestly I’m surprised they didn’t think of this sooner.
Hear the album, buy the book,
This is dF
Whenever anyone asks what was the most influential band in my impressionable youth – the one that got me through the hell of high school and whose songs I identified with so strongly it was as if they somehow knew who I was and were writing their songs specifically for me – I don’t have to think about the answer.
It’s Rush.
Seriously. A guy in my high-school drama group lent me a cassette of Moving Pictures, and it blew me away. Then they released their concert album, Exit … Stage Left, which introduced me to their back catalog, which I started collecting. Now that they’re past their 40th year as a band, you’d think I’d have a shelf full of Rush albums.
Well. Not exactly. I confess that Grace Under Pressure was the last Rush album that truly impressed me. Once they’d completed their transformation from epic prog-rock to shiny chrome-plated pristine 80s band that gleamed like the interior of an Imperial spaceship, they more or less stuck with that formula to the point where it was diminishing returns for me – something I’ve chalked up to the fact that as I grew up, the impact had been made and nothing they could do could ever really live up to that, which is my fault, not theirs.
Anyway, every so often they came out with an album that looked like a return to form, but really the closest they ever came was Feedback, which was a covers album of songs that influenced them. Good, but not awesome. So usually when they put out a new record I don’t get my hopes up.
Now they’ve got a new album out – Clockwork Angels – and it is epic. Literally. Apart from being the densest and loudest record I’ve heard this year (apart from Off!, maybe), it’s also a steampunk concept album where all the songs are at least six minutes long. And I might not have taken a chance on it, but then I heard a track on the PA inside HMV.
This very track here.
Now THAT is the Rush song I’ve been waiting to hear since 1984 – heavy riffs, squally guitar solo, epic mythology. Oh yes.
But what about the rest of the album?
Well, quite a bit of it lives up to the expectations of the above track, but I confess it took a second pass to appreciate some of them. I still have to adjust to the fact that Rush does not sound like they did when I was in high school, and that they have a tendency to sound like they’ve taken sections of four different songs and mixed them together into one big song with no attempt to segue smoothly between each section – or so it seems on first listen.
Once you get the hang of it, it works more often than not. There’s some filler, but a lot less of it than more recent albums, and quite a few songs are worth the price of admission alone. So I can say with confidence this is the most excited I’ve been about a Rush album in a long time.
Also, leave it to Rush to have Kevin J. Anderson write a novel based on their concept album. How nerdy can you get? Honestly I’m surprised they didn’t think of this sooner.
Hear the album, buy the book,
This is dF
