GRACE UNDER PRESSURE

I had bought it just because it was Rush and I wanted to have everything. For some reason, in the beginning only Distant Early Warning appealed to me (come to think of it, maybe because I had already listened to A Show of Hands and it was familiar) and now I feel appaled by my early judgment! In fact, if the overall quality was not watered down by The Body Electric and Kid Gloves (which I keep listening in case my judgment changes once again - it hasn't) it would be a top Rush album. Afterimage (written about Robbie Whelan, a tape operator at Le Studio who was killed in a car accident) drips with emotion, Red Sector A which speaks about the Holocaust imprisonment camps manages to convey a feeling of anxiety and desperation, Red Lenses is spectacularly groovy (thanks, mostly, to the bass lines). As a whole, Geddy Lee's keyboards have taken a more leading role and Alex Lifeson's guitar focuses on the rhythm where the reggae influence is kind of obvious (consider The Enemy Within - the first part of the trilogy The Fear which started on Moving Pictures and was presented in descending order). The music generally is permeated by a dark atmosphere (excluding Kid Gloves) and I have read this was because the band was thinking seriously to break up - in fact Distant Early Warning was about it and the picture of a C-clamp in the inner of the artwork hints at that, too.

It was an album that Rush had difficulty to do. It took them three months to write the material and then spent five months recording it and the sessions were pretty hectic. Many times they felt that they couldn't come up with what the song demanded. They wanted new challenges because they had achieved a certain level of proficiency in what they were already doing. Consider also that they worked for the first time with another producer than Terry Brown in order to go into other musical territories. Many fans miss their up-to-1980s sound, but to my ears the music is so good that quite a few times I get the goosepimples. Try Between the Wheels and hear for yourselves.

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