VICTOR

My respect for Lifeson is huge. His canon boasts some of my favourite guitar solos and I admire his versatility and openness for trying out new approaches and sounds. So obviously I rushed to the store when this solo album hit the shelves.

Victor is the first solo project emanating from the Rush stable, and it is a daring album. It's like the bubble of ideas that had been accumulating in Lifeson's head over the preceding years suddenly exploded onto this album. The disadvantage is that he ends up trying to do too many things at once.

But generally I'm not disappointed, not at all. In comparison to Rush, there's a strong influence from alternative rock and noise rock, there's even some industrial sounds. More often then not, all of those influences appear in one song, which makes listening to this album into some sort of "What influences do you hear?" quiz.

As an album it doesn't hold up all too well but there's a couple of great songs and lots of creative ideas which is greatly appreciated. I wouldn't really recommended it to Rush fans though, unless you liked Vapour Trails a lot.