Rush rolled out their eleventh studio album in 1985 with little fanfare. The album was the continuation of the area explored in Signals and Grace Under Pressure with more keyboard textures and a further softening of Alex Lifeson's guitar sound.
The opening tune, 'The Big Money' featured a great guitar riff and another of his patented screaming guitar solos but aficionados of heavy guitar would be sorely disappointed by most of the rest of the album.
Lifeson was struggling to remain relevant in the context of the band due to the omnipresent sound of synthesizers.
Peart's lyrical theme for the album was about power and the many forms it takes and he hits the mark time and again with his flowing use of imagery in his lyrics. Lyrically, this is one of the best Rush albums to listen to. Peart had perfected his voice as a writer and he was better able to evoke emotion quickly especially in the song, 'Manhattan Project'. He calls to mind the mad desire for men to possess the biggest stick on the playground in the quest for an atomic bomb. The lyrics are eerily haunting as the song starts,
"Imagine a time, when it all began.
In the dying days of a war, a weapon that would settle the score.
Whoever found it first would be sure to do their worst. They always had before."
He continues to draw stark imagery as he paints a picture of men so eager to learn if they could do this horrible thing they stopped wondering if they should do it.
This is my favorite track on the album because I think it is the most visceral and starkly real.
The music is heavily laden with keys but Lifeson does manage to shine in a few spots albeit in a greatly reduced capacity. His guitar solo is sparse, relying mostly on harmonic tones played as an audible punctuation mark. His guitar tones seemed to have softened to play better against Geddy's keyboards and the song does have a dramatic climax but the lack of a strong guitar line weakens it somewhat.
The following track, 'Marathon' has Lifeson back but the intro is still filled with keyboard melodies that again soften the effect of his melody line. The verse is filled with Lee playing a very cool bass part that relies on a doublet played on the downbeat the first time through and the upbeat on the second time through. Lee's playing is crisp and sharp while Lifeson seems relegated to the back seat for most of the album. The song features use of a full string section and a choir, things unheard of in their earlier albums. The trend towards softer music seems to have fully taken hold on the album. The chorus has Lifeson buried so far back in the mix that he virtually disappears again. He doesn't come back out of the shadows until his guitar solo which is all to brief. The ride out of the song is all Lee, strings and choir with Peart adding the rhythmic structure to carry the weight of it all.
'Territories' is Peart's lyrical take on the dangers of nationalism run amok and is filled with stabs of sound played on synth. Again, Lifeson is barely heard until the pre-chorus.
This was the net affect of the new direction the band had taken. Lifeson had been forced to become the "sprinkles" on the frosting and the keyboards were now carrying the bulk of the melodic structure.
I like this album but I don't love it like some die-hard Rush fans did. Being a guitar player first and foremost, I was disappointed at the lack of guitar parts that I could walk away singing.
The rest of the album is more of the same but a high point for me despite the increased use of keyboards is the song 'Mystic Rhythms'. It is a beautiful piece featuring Alex playing a captivating acoustic guitar part along to Peart's pulse on drums.
I felt that so many of the keyboard parts could have been done by Lifeson in his own inimitable style and given the album a more human touch that got lost quickly after "Grace Under Pressure".
The music sounded dry and unemotional and lacked much of the character of the early material. It was almost clinical in how impersonal it sounded.
The album was released when I was stationed in Germany with the US Army and I waited patiently to get it only to be puzzled once again at the lack of guitar it presented.
But being a fan means standing with them in good times and bad and I learned to appreciate the album to a greater degree after a few years and a few hundred times listening to it.
It's not my favorite to say the least and I can't even say it's in my top ten from them but it does stand out as a transition point in the creative life of the band.
No comments:
Post a Comment