Think of those instantly iconic albums. You know the ones I’m talking about, right? Given a band with a pretty vast catalog of recorded work, there is always at least one album that new fans, who have recently ‘discovered’ the band, gravitate towards for an ‘introductory’ or ‘statement-defining’ experience, beyond the standard “greatest hits” collection. For an act as…

It seems to be an all-too-common thing (almost cliché, really) for bands to put out an album of cover tunes, as a basic declaration of “this is where we come from” or “this is what influenced us” or “this is what we’ve been reduced to”, etc. You definitely would be hard-pressed to place Rush in…

Rush produced a low-key but respectable debut with their 1974 self-titled album, emerging as an energetic (if slightly derivative) blues-hard rock power trio from the Great White North. With the departure of original drummer John Rutsey, the band thrived with drummer/primary lyricist Neil Peart joining guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee, following up their debut…

The highest compliment you can give Rush’s 1987 release Hold Your Fire is that, despite the further descent into/evolution towards 80s proggy-synth pop, the music still sounds quintessentially Lee/Lifeson/Peart. While the tableau onto which the band expressed their creative talents is a radical shift from the hard-hitting rock of the mid 70s, the epic discovery…

Much has been said, written, blogged, pontificated, praised, vilified, ignored, and cherished about Rush’s so-called “80’s period” or “keyboard era” or whatever you want to call their post-Moving Pictures, pre-Counterpoints releases. No matter how you view that period of the band’s career, most point to Rush’s 1982 album Signals as the line of demarcation between classic/hard/prog…

Producer Nick Raskulinecz lobbied hard to work with Rush on their 2007 album Snakes & Arrows, and the result is probably one of the strongest (if not THE strongest) album of the band’s later period. Ostensibly he was working to return Rush to their experimental heyday of the 2112 through Hemispheres era, although I don’t think…

Fly By Night, the first of two 1975 releases from Rush, is the band’s second album but is the first to feature drummer and primary lyricist Neil Peart, which in many ways makes it the band’s first “real” album. Peart brought so much to the table — more literary allusions, deeply personal and philosophical lyricism,…

After the somewhat chaotic production of 1984’s Grace Under Pressure (which I suspect worked in the album’s favor, but that’s neither here nor there), Rush returned to the studio in 1985 for their followup Power Windows, a more confident-sounding and cohesive album than its predecessor (but not quite as good). Themes of power, its utilization,…