ROLL THE BONES

Recorded in the spring of 1991 "Roll the Bones" finds Rush about 7 years beyond their last great album and sounding a bit tired. I find myself agreeing with Sinkadotentree once again. There's something about the production of Rupert Hine that just sucks out from Rush the punch which I found pleasurable. The sound is watered-down commercial and lacking the special vibe that made Grace and Signals so wonderful. The sing-along choruses get simply too repetitive once too often and the meat of the tracks can't rescue it. It is not a complete disaster however. Being Rush, there's always going to be something positive coming through. In this case, you have a damn fine lead-off track in "Dreamline" with its intense, driving pace and yearning melodic chorus. "Bravado" and "Ghost of a Chance" are strong tracks as well with nice melodies and poignant lyrical themes. Lifeson impresses me most often here from a performance perspective with some truly biting guitar leads and interesting chord sequences-and just the fact that he doesn't sound like he's on auto-pilot. Besides the dizzying fireworks of "Where's my Thing?" even Neil sounds like he's phoning in some tracks. Knowing the talents of Geddy and Neil I would guess this is due to the quality of the tracks and their arrangements more than the playing. Stuff like "Heresy" sounds like the backing for an Ambien commercial. Some of these tracks quite frankly fall into territory that Rush shouldn't be in ("The Big Wheel"? Ouch!) The last two tracks are just pretty brutal. About one-third of "Roll the Bones" is respectable in my book, not quite enough to get this up to a 3 star rating. Whether it is their worst album as John says, I can't say as I've still a few latter day titles to hear. But I can't recommend this title and am not inspired to say much else. 5/10.