The mid to late 80's were a time of experimentation and change for the band as they charted a course into heretofore unexplored waters with the addition and reliance on keyboards to reshape their sound. The album "Presto" was released in 1989 and had the band navigating their way back to familiar waters featuring a more stripped down sound and fewer keyboard textures. That album had some good moments but they had been away from their traditional sound for too long and there were times when they appeared to lose the thread of what they were trying to do and the album felt flat overall.
They cut the tour to support "Presto" short because as bassist Geddy Lee would later say, "It just didn't seem to be working the way we had envisioned it." The tour wound up being a positive experience despite being overcautious and having a shorter tour schedule than usual.
The tour ended, the band was still in the mood to play so they decided a break was in order before starting writing sessions for the next album. But they wound up cutting the break short as well because all three were ready to get back to work on the new record.
In the final analysis, it was this exuberance that would prove to be the magic ingredient that would make their next album a success.
Filled with a new sense of energy the band ensconced themselves in Chalet studios in Claremont, Ontario for two and a half months.
As they had always done, Geddy and Alex went off to work on the music and Neil retreated to his cottage to write lyrics with a pile of notes surrounding him to work from, most just single lyric lines or phrases that he would later use to flesh out his new songs.
Following a precedent he had established earlier, he chose a lyrical theme that would run through the entire album. He chose the idea of chance as a force in everyone's life and how nearly every event could be traced back to random chance.
The album contained some of his strongest lyrics to date as he explored the way life can be a game of chance for us all.
Geddy and Alex meantime, set off to write the music using only guitar and bass, relying on Geddy's ability to write vocal melodies and using the music to accentuate them instead of the other way around as they had been doing previously.
The end result of this approach was a much more guitar and vocal driven collection of songs that brought them closer to their roots than they had been in quite a while.
I must take a moment and say that "Roll The Bones" is one of my favorite albums from them in case that fact isn't already painfully obvious yet. This album just worked on so many different levels that I fell in love with it almost immediately.
The songs were crisp and tight with guitar parts that were no longer buried under keyboards. Oh, there were still keyboards to be sure but they were used to add to a melodic line from Geddy or as an ethereal addition floating by almost unnoticed. As someone who was less than pleased with the previous few albums for their lack of good, solid guitar, this was a refreshing and welcome change and one that I felt was the perfect blend of both guitar and keyboards.
The decision by Geddy and Alex to use only guitar and bass as the primary vehicle for writing was evident in how strong the songs ultimately became.
Speaking of the songs, let's take a look at one of the best collections of songs Rush has ever produced. I say that because the songs compliment and define each other so well.
Producer Rupert Hine's influence can be heard in how cohesive and solid the songs are. He had produced their previous album which was a good album but not particularly great. This time around however, he had finally found his way to doing great production for a band with the legacy of Rush and he had a much better collection of tunes to work with and it showed.
The opening track, 'Dreamline' has Lifeson playing a staccato melody using his patented blend of fretted notes and open strings until the band pounds in full force to open the second half of the verse. Peart's lyrics are uncharacteristically more abstract than usual and he uses brief but wonderful phrases that call to mind the sometimes confusing state of mind that youth can experience.
"When we are young, wandering the face of the Earth,
Wondering what our dreams might be worth,
Learning that we're only immortal for a limited time."
He explores this theme with the vastness of the universe as the backdrop and the randomness of life as the ultimate catalyst for the young.
'Bravado' is a wonderful song that tells us that failure is not the end of success but the beginning. He uses the phrase, "We will pay the price but we will not count the cost." as way to say that giving up is never an option.
The next song, 'Roll The Bones' is perhaps the most interesting song on the album for all the different textures it contains. Peart uses his electronic kit to trigger keyboard stabs as punctuation and Has Lifeson playing both an acoustic guitar for the chorus and electric for the rest of the song which includes a very tasteful but perfect guitar solo. The verse has Lee playing one of the coolest bass grooves ever and he and Peart lock in together for a rhythmic structure that frequently accents the upbeats giving it a very strong syncopated feel. It features a quirky rap section after the solo that is hilarious but it works. The rap section is interspersed with Hi-Q pulses by Peart and Lee's voice processed through a harmonizer to drop it down more than an octave.
Song after song, the band makes a positive statement about the importance of guitar and bass. Lee's choice to focus on vocal melodies is apparent in how well each song sounds vocally and there are several instances where he adds vocal harmonies that strengthen his vocal lines even more.
My personal favorite track on the album is 'Ghost Of A Chance' a song featuring some of the most gorgeous guitar tones I've ever heard on any album by any band. He uses a slightly distorted guitar sound for the intro and verse riffs but reverts to a soft, lush clean tone with light effects for the chorus while highlighting a simple but beautiful melody to float over the top. His guitar solo is set up perfectly by Lee and Peart as the emotional element is turned up in the run up to the solo. For me, it's one of his best solos ever for how complete and expressive it is.
The rest of the album is strong as well with Peart exploring the concept of chance as the universal constant of life.
All in all, this is one of the most satisfying Rush albums in a long time for me after the exploratory years of the 80's.
I plan to dissect the song 'Heresy' in a separate blog to better explore both the song and my own personal reaction to it. I was affected most profoundly by the song and it forced me to analyze my own preconceived ideas about the future of the world.
"Roll The Bones" easily makes my top ten favorite Rush albums because of how solid it is and because it marked a change back to basics for the band that would carry on right up to their final album.
No comments:
Post a Comment