MY FAVOURITE HEADACHE

It is surprising how much this one sounds like a real Rush album. Where Lifeson's earlier solo album served as an outlet to explore uncharted territory, Lee seems perfectly happy writing more Rush-type songs for us. The musicians accompanying him are very adequate but don't take the spotlight as much as Lifeson and Peart do.

Sitting inbetween Test For Echo and Vapor Trails, it sometimes sounds like it could have been the Rush album to fall exactly between those two albums. The focus is very song-oriented and Geddy shameless applies plenty of classic songwriting clichés. One of those is cheesy chord modulations between chorus and verses, or worse, by a nasty break after the second chorus. Another feature is some fairly standard chord strumming and rather bland melodies. Some of these features also plagued the Rush albums around it but there Lifeson and Peart managed to obscure them much better then the musicians do on this album.

The album starts very pleasantly. With the first two songs we even have some great additions to the Rush canon. But from then on it sinks into sentimental FM-rock writing and mellow pop-balladry. This album painfully shows who was responsible for the cringe-worthy parts on recent Rush albums. Only the last track deserves an occasional spin, but that's only because the 8 songs that precede it are really trite.

This solo album won't add anything you've heard on recent Rush albums. Only recommended if you like the mellow side of Rush as evident on Roll The Bones and Test of Echo.