PERMANENT WAVES (40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

The 40th Anniversary remaster of Permanent Waves proper is alright but not particularly essential if you already have a fairly recent remaster of it; the really exciting part of this package is the live material, as is the case with many of these bumper 40th Anniversary rereleases of the Rush canon. In this case, rather than provide a particular live show, we get a sort of Frankenstein affair - the cream of the crop from several different performances cherrypicked to simulate a setlist of the era with the band on their best form. There's even a runthrough of the complete Cygnus X-1 saga, albeit with some abridgements to make it weigh in at a touch under 23 minutes as opposed to over 28 minutes.