20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Test for Echo

DAY THIRTEEN: Rush, Test for Echo, running time 53:25, released September 10, 1996

Quick: name the only Rush album whose opening track has never been played live beyond the tour that supported that particular album.  You guessed it: Test for Echo, a largely unrepresented album on Rush tours, with only two songs, “Driven” and “Resist,” cracking the set list since 1997.  Perhaps for that reason it’s easy to overlook this album, and many Rush diehards consider this among Rush’s worst efforts.  But try listening to it again and you might conclude that it’s actually among the band’s best in the last thirty years.  I did.

Continuing the trend started on Counterparts (with the same producer, Peter Collins, who also produced – as difficult as it is to believe – Power Windows and Hold Your Fire), Test for Echo zips along with a heavier, guitar-oriented sound, powerfully blending effective riffs, technical time signatures and memorable melodies.  What else are you looking for from Rush?  The opening track seemed an odd choice to me back when it was released in 1996 since I was used to the energetic, spirited number to kick off an album, but “Test for Echo” sets the mood perfectly, mirroring the bewilderment expressed in the lyrics of a pop culture that glorifies crime. “Half the World” – a radio-friendly song reminiscent of “New Word Man” – didn’t even make the live album from this tour, but to me it’s a terrific piece with compelling lyrics and a great hook, and “Time and Motion” is a barnburner that harkens back to Rush of the early 80s; it’s my favorite song from the album.  Even more accessible tracks like “Virtuality” have some incredible moments, with a driving opening riff before resolving into a pop-friendly chorus.  This was a song I sort of dreaded listening to with its cheesy lyrics, but today it worked for me.  Tomorrow, perhaps not.  Opinions are finicky things.

The only two tracks that truly stumble on the album are “Limbo,” a meandering instrumental with no discernible hook, and “Dog Years,” a song that starts off fine before losing its air on a lackluster chorus and an even worse outro.  And on the otherwise good track, “Resist,” Geddy overcomplicates things by harmonizing his lead vocal part throughout, muddying a melody that’s only allowed to shine on the live version from Different Stages.  A few of the tunes have one section too many, as if Lee and Lifeson felt compelled to include every line of Peart’s lyrics.  “Virtuality” is one example.  The section that begins, “Let’s dance tonight to a virtual song” detracts from the rest of the piece, and “Dog Years” and “Totem” follow similar courses.

Ultimately, the best of Test for Echo isn’t quite as good as the best of Counterparts, but its weaker tracks are better, making the album a more solid, consistent effort. 

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 4.  I’ll be rewinding a full two decades to the album that kept Rush from calling it a day: 2112.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Hemispheres

DAY TWELVE: Rush, Hemispheres, running time 36:14, released October 29, 1978

Sitting down to listen to Hemispheres this morning, I expected what some consider Rush’s most self-indulgent album (and indeed, the band itself subtitles their lengthy instrumental “La Villa Strangiato” “An exercise in Self-Indulgence”) to be a bloated mess.  Instead, I was surprised by how fresh and exciting it sounds, even showing signs of minimalism along the way.  It’s a snappy, ambitious effort that highlights Rush’s virtuosity while still presenting memorable and accessible melodies.

“Hemispheres,” a sequel from the previous album, is lengthy at eighteen minutes, but it doesn’t get bogged down under its own weight.  The prelude effectively touches on all the prominent themes, thereby anchoring the listener in what’s about to transpire, and the sections are well laid out with interesting time signatures and memorable melodies.  The piece takes a momentary respite in the section “Cygnus,” which reminds me a lot of how Yes took things down a notch during their magnum opus “Close to the Edge” in the “I Get Up, I Get Down” section.  The only thing “Hemispheres” lacks is the compelling story that made “2112” such a terrific vehicle for a side-long song (“Clockwork Angels” suffers the same comparison).  The battle of the heart and mind simply isn’t as interesting as oppressive forces shattering a person’s discovery of music.  Nonetheless, it’s a good piece, and the ending (“The Sphere”) is one I keep hoping Rush will one day play live.  It’s such a beautiful, short piece and still within Geddy’s vocal range, that it would make a wonderful encore.  The audience would explode.  Perhaps one day.

Side two offers two shorter tracks, “Circumstances” and “The Trees,” that both take advantage of dynamic changes during their respective instrumental sections (something the previous album I listened to, Power Windows, could have benefitted greatly from), and the former offers a heretofore rare glimpse into a first-person Neil Peart, something he’ll explore more and more in the upcoming albums.  The 9-minute “La Villa Strangiato” is Rush’s first legitimate instrumental, and it works on so many levels.  After a terrific classical guitar opening by Lifeson, the song begins a long crescendo into a very unpretentious three-chord theme before going off into some more elaborate directions.  What I really like about this tune, aside from it’s obvious playfulness during the “Monsters!” theme (a rip-off, by the way, of Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” – a fact that resulted a payment by Rush to Scott), is the way Geddy gets the hell out of the way at 3:40 and lets Lifeson do his thing, which he does oh so well for the next two minutes.  It’s a fantastic example of how less is more, and it’s among LIfeson’s most impressive and effective guitar solos.

This was the end of the line for Rush’s penchant for lengthy sci-fi pieces, and greater things were soon to follow as the band began to balance shorter, more accessible pieces with slightly longer, more ambitious efforts.  In this sense, perhaps “The God of balance” in “Hemispheres” was a prescient symbol of the band’s musical journey.

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 16, Test for Echo, the end of an era for Rush before personal events forced a six-year interruption.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Power Windows

DAY ELEVEN: Rush, Power Windows, running time 44:44, released October 29, 1985

When I saw Rush in Chicago in 2012, I was surprised that the band played not one, not two, not three, but four songs from Power Windows.  An interesting choice, since this album is the antithesis of recent efforts that focus on a hard-edged, fuller guitar sonic landscape.  I suspect there were many in the audience who were less than happy about it.  I was thrilled to hear “Territories,” my favorite off the album, and maybe one more would have been fine.  Four seemed to be pushing it just a bit.

This is the album when Rush made a conscious decision not to worry about being able to reproduce things live.  From this point on, the band would lean more and more on prerecorded tracks, triggering them with foot pedals or synth keys, and their live performances became a little less live.  Even easy synth parts, like the beginning of “The Big Money,” are not played live by Geddy Lee.  I’m not sure why that is, but I suspect it has something to do with the band’s insistence of having their live tracks sound virtually identical as the studio versions.  This is a mistake in my mind.  Great bands like Zeppelin or The Who conquered the stage by doing just the opposite, with each performance unique and unpredictable (to a point).  Imagine seeing Rush perform a song and not knowing how different it might be than the night before?  It could produce some very interesting results.

Listening to Power Windows today, the opening songs – “The Big Money” and “Grand Designs” – sounded fresh and exciting, with more prominent guitar work than I remembered.  Sure, there are frilly synth sequences that kind of muck things up, but overall I enjoyed the experience.  The next two tracks, “Manhattan Project” and “Marathon,” are again good songs, but suddenly Alex becomes less and less important, and by “Territories” he all but disappears during the chorus.  From there, the album really breaks down for me.  The tracks vary so little in mood, tempo, rhythm and production, that by the time I get to “Middletown Dreams,” “Emotion Detector,” and “Mystic Rhythms,” I’ve simply had enough.  Each song sounds unpleasantly similar to the song that preceded it.  The album could have benefitted greatly from a tune featuring an acoustic guitar, a ¾ time signature or a less in-your-face synth sound – something to mix things up a bit.

Rush has said that if they could re-record an album, Presto would be it, but I think Power Windows would get my vote.  Each song might stand on its own merits, but having eight songs in a row with so little to distinguish them makes the listening experience bland and unpleasant.  It would be very cool to hear the band try some of these songs as a basic rock trio.

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 6, Hemispheres, the last Rush album to offer a side-long song.  Talk about a different feel!  We shall see how it holds up.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Feedback

DAY TEN: Rush, Feedback, running time 27:08, released June 29, 2004

There are only two legitimate reasons to record a cover song: play it better than the original (The Pretender’s version of “Stop Your Sobbing”) or play it completely differently from the original (Manfred Mann’s covers from Springsteen’s debut album).  On Rush’s cover album, Feedback, they achieve neither of these objectives, as they plow through high-energy versions of songs by The Who, Buffalo Springfield, Edie Cochran, The Yardbirds, Loves and Cream (doing a cover of Robert Johnson).  The best of the lot is “The Seeker,” but it adds little, if anything, to the original by The Who. 

Kudos to Rush for trying something different, something that flies in the face if what many consider a pretentious band, but ultimately the question must be asked: what’s the point?

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 11, Power Windows, the pinnacle (or low point?) of Rush’s use of synthesizers.

20 Rush Albums in 20 Days: Permanent Waves

DAY NINE: Rush, Permanent Waves, running time 35:35, released January 1, 1980

It’s funny that Rush’s first album of the new decade was considered such a departure from the lengthy prog-rock reputation they’d earned to that point.  Sure, Permanent Waves avoids the side-long track, but it has the same number of songs as 2112 and A Farewell to Kings (Hemispheres seems to be the one album that pushed the envelope with only four).  Furthermore, the tour to support this album only included two of its shorter songs: “The Spirit of Radio” and “Freewill,” and then two longer pieces – ”Jacob’s Ladder” and “Natural Science” – that would have felt at home on either of the previous two LPs.

Still, there’s a refreshing change with this album, starting with Neil Peart’s more-relatable lyrics.  We saw glimpses of this on previous albums (“Circumstances,” “Closer to the Heart”), but songs about radio, relationships and choosing one’s destiny are a far cry from the Cygnus X-1 epics.  The positive messages translate well to a more upbeat, accessible music.  Even “Jacob’s Ladder,” a longer piece that at first glance might be about something mysterious or supernatural, is about nothing more than sun breaking through the clouds.  Go figure.

Simpler lyrics, but the music still astounds in its deceiving complexity.  “The Spirit of Radio” may at its center be a four chord song with a blues riff, but try playing the opening 15 seconds in your garage band and get back to me.  It ain’t easy.  And even after thirty-four years, the drum part at 5:16 in “Jacob’s Ladder” continues to throw me.  The guitar is in 13/8 time, and then Peart comes in with a beat that seems to be on its own time signature, yet lands on the one beat to keep it all together.  Great stuff.  The instrumental break of “Free Will” continues to astound audiences whenever Rush plays the song live, and “Natural Science” is another song with great time signature challenges.

I also have to mention my favorite Alex Lifeson lead guitar part, coming at 1:34 as he begins his solo in “Jacob’s Ladder.”  Like David Gilmore, Lifeson is so good at creating a melody rather than just playing notes as fast as he can, and this part to me is absolutely perfect – a simple but effective motif that’s repeated three times.  For me, he could have repeated it ten times.

As for live representation, only three of the six songs have made it into a regular rotation.  Unless I missed it, “Jacob’s Ladder” hasn’t been played live since 1980, “Entre Nous” was only performed in 2007, and “Different Strings” has never been played live.  This is a bit surprising to me, as Permanent Waves is among Rush’s strongest albums (if not the strongest).  There simply isn’t a weak track on it.

The only potentially critical thing to say about the album is its production.  It sounds a little boxy to me, with the use of the stereo spectrum underutilized (and poorly utilized during the guitar solo of “Free Will”), and lacking in a rich, full low end.  If I had an engineer’s ears I could be more specific, but the album doesn’t sound as good as its successor, Moving Pictures.

Now, it’s important to note that at 35 minutes, Rush was able to avoid any filler on Permanent Waves, and I find myself asking the question: if I’ve been critical of many of Rush’s albums for being too long, is this album perhaps too short?  Or, at the very least, should it be regarded less positively because it’s easier to compose 35 minutes of good material than 50 minutes of good material?  After all, Presto easily has 35 minutes worth of excellent music.  That album’s only weak point for me was that it has about two songs too many.  So, should Presto be docked merely because the band was more prolific (or, more likely, that the band decided to accommodate the CD format vs. the album format)?

Good questions, I think.  But for me, Permanent Waves is near perfection.

Tomorrow, I’ll be listening to…drum roll, please…number 18, Rush’s cover album, Feedback.  I’ve never listened to this album before, so it’ll be the only review that I can say with certainty is without any preconceived notions.