Music Appreciation Rush:"Grace Under Pressure"

Fresh off the heels of their tour to promote their last album, "Signals", the band once again took a short break before returning to the studio to start work on the next album. During the tour, the decision had been made to make a split with longtime producer Terry Brown and find someone new who could better present the new direction the band would be taking. This was a decision of monumental importance owing to the fact that Brown had produced each and every album from the beginning for the band and was considered the driving force for their epic 1976 release, "2112" and the incredible success of "Moving Pictures" in 1981.
The split was described as amicable by both sides. The members felt it was time to move on and Brown wasn't really comfortable with the direction the band was taking with more keyboard laden material so they went their separate ways on good terms.
They eventually selected Peter Henderson to produce the new record after a false start with another producer who was too busy to take on the project.
Writing sessions began before Henderson officially signed on so the band started writing without a clear idea of who would be producing the album and it gave them a sense of urgency to make the album as successful as they could despite this fact. Once recording began, Henderson's occasional indecisiveness left the band to make most of the creative decisions about the material themselves. In the end he shared a production credit with the band but it was they who ultimately had final say on both the arrangement and production the songs.
Unlike the previous album, "Signals", the new recordings were much more guitar driven as Lifeson once again was forced to reinvent both his guitar sound and his approach to playing to compliment the ever encroaching sound of keyboards.
The opening track, 'Distant Early Warning' featured a new Lifeson arpeggiating his chord structures and even his solo, which featured his use of simple chording during the solo to give it more depth and character. The fact that he was able to effectively change his approach to playing was his statement that even though he would be forced to share his sonic space with Geddy's keyboards, he was still going to leave his own particular mark on the music. The entire album, in fact, is filled with this new take on how he would present his guitar work and there are moments of truly inspired playing on his part. 'Red Sector A', a song about the horrors of prison camp life, featured Lifeson playing a chord progression that bordered on mystical for it's beauty and complexity. 'Kid Gloves' starts off with him playing a fairly simple melody mixed with a timed delay that let the notes repeat and add to each other.
This was a brand new Alex and he was determined not to let this new electronic voice spoil his fun.
Despite the growing addition of keyboards, this album is a tour de force of Alex Lifeson showing the band and the music world that he was a force to be reckoned with. Sadly, the next few albums would push him both farther back in the music and strain his relationship with long time writing partner, Lee.
The songs are much shorter than in previous years but the album is still strong in overall effect being perhaps the first time that the band had made the conscious decision to avoid the epics they had become famous for and choose instead to make their writing more compact and concise.
It worked. The problem, as we would later learn, was that it worked a bit too well as the band strayed further and further from their roots to pursue this new course.