speaking of Rush

I doubt many readers of this blog are Rush fans, but I’ll allow myself another self-indulgent post on them as I listen to this rather odd collection of mostly third-string (but still pretty good) songs.

For me as for most people, Rush peaked from around 1976-1981 (and I didn’t even start listening to them until 1984). 1976 is actually a questionable start date, and depends on whether you think “2112” is a listenable album; I would have said no, but my 14-year-old nephew loves it, and his musical tastes are good enough that he got me to rediscover “2112” a bit while I was in Portland.

“A Farewell to Kings” is really when they shifted decisively from hard rock to prog rock, and I think they’re one of the bands that benefitted from this shift. One can always take a shot at Neil Peart for pretentiousness now and then (even “The Onion” did so once) but at times he does really nice work with the lyrics.

“Hemispheres” might be seen as too concept-y, but it’s probably my favorite of their albums.

“Permanent Waves” (1980) and of course “Moving Pictures” (1981) were their major hit albums, and probably their artistic peak, and I suppose their peak of mass popularity with “The Spirit of Radio” and “Tom Sawyer.”

Then came 1982 and the “Signals” debacle. That’s where I came into the fan picture. My older high school friends Jeff and Kirk had been huge fans since back into the 1970’s, and as of early 1984 they were still cursing “Signals” for being a muffled, over-computerized disaster. And of course, Terry Brown was fired as the band’s producer after that album. “Subdivisions” remains an absolute classic, but the rest of the album could vanish and it wouldn’t bother me much.

Then “Grace Under Pressure” was released, one of only two new albums to come out while I was actually a fan (“Power Windows” was the other, an OK but not outstanding album, and after that I had moved on and didn’t care enough to pay any attention).

So, maybe that inclines me to overrate “Grace Under Pressure,” but I do think it’s a better album than is usually believed. It’s a nice bounceback from the over-computerized “Signals” without succumbing to nostalgia for what they used to sound like before 1982. They move onwards through the tunnel instead of backwards before it. I’m not sure that most of the stuff on the far side of the tunnel is actually that good, but “Grace Under Pressure” is the sound of departing the tunnel, and that gives it a certain special something. The first three songs are great, but my favorite is the least acclaimed of them: “Afterimage.”

Alex Lifeson has always lived in the shadow of his highly-rated instrumental comrades Lee and Peart, but I think “Grace Under Pressure” is the hour of “Lifeson.” He feels like the dominant member of the trio here, for perhaps the only time. (I remember one year in high school when Rolling Stone rated the top rock musician on each instrument, and Rush won two of their three instruments: it was Geddy Lee on bass, Neil Peart on drums, and Eric Clapton on guitar! Now that’s a power trio that would be amusing to hear. How would Clapton have soloed on “Tom Sawyer,” for instance?)