TEST FOR ECHO

Two and a half stars. First off, I am a huge Rush fan. There are no albums by this band that I don't love. Except this one. Mind you, not all of it is bad. Parts of it are great. There is still great musical interplay between Geddy, Alex and Neil but there is too much blandness and truly awful moments that spoil it.

Test For Echo is a great hard rocking song along with Driven. Nice way to start off an album. Next up is Half the World. Not a bad song but not memorable either.

The Colour Of Right. After the nice intro it just becomes a bland song. Nothing special.

Time and Motion. Good song. Nice structure. Proggy time signature. Not great but solid.

Totem. This song at first sounds like a commercial hit. It starts to go through a typical modern Rush change which in the past would have been good but It seems like the they had trouble matching the lyrics to the music in some parts. It has good parts and bad parts. Unfortunately it ends on one of the bad parts.

Dog Years. This song would have made a funny outtake or bonus track. But as track on an album? Awful moment number one, when Geddy sings "I would rather be a tortoise from Galapagos or a span of geological time." I often wonder what he thought before he sang that goofy line. Also lots of dog puns and clichés. Serious, bitch, tale (tail), sniffing at the hydrant etc.

Virtualty. Has great parts and ridiculous parts. Cool riff at the beginning, great guitar picking in the pre chorus. And then Net boy, net girl....put your message in a modem and throw it in the cyber sea. Corny.

Resist. Great song. Much better when they redid it live acoustically though.

Limbo. Rush always scores when they do an instrumental. This one is no different.

Carve Away at the Stone. And they end the album with another bland track.

Like i mentioned earlier, there are bright spots but overall it's just a disappointing effort . The better songs aren't as great as other efforts and the bad ones are among, if not, the worst. Thankfully there was much better albums that followed this. I do have to say that the production is crystal clear although a little too compressed.