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,…

Rush’s 20th studio album (and as of this writing, their latest release) Clockwork Angels was an ambitious project in many ways. It was the band’s first studio record since 2007’s Snakes & Arrows, during which time they had seen a huge uptick in pop culture awareness and mainstream acceptance, bolstered by appearances in the 2009…