The first new Rush album released after I became a fan was Roll The Bones. I was in high school, a drummer, and in love with "YYZ". And any of the late 70's albums - still do. I'll put "Natural Science", "Natural Science" from Rush In Rio, and "Natural Science" from R30 together on a song list and put it on repeat. I would probably toss "Vital Signs" in there as well because that songs rocks harder than any Rush song ever. That's what I though about Rush in the late 80's. My primer to the band was Chronicles. From there I gathered all the tapes of the albums that Chronicles showcased. And, as a young rock drummer who loved Star Wars and comic books, I listened to Rush non-stop.
An odd fascination to me was Signals - I loved "Subdivisions". Not to mention "Losing It" and "The Analog Kid". but the album was just so out of place sounding to me. Perhaps that was a reflection of long-time producer Terry Jones' friction with the band's choice to make Geddy's synth the front piece. It was dark and I liked it. I liked it the same way I liked The Police's Ghost In The Machine. It's got a lot of soul for an album composed byte by bit. Grace Under Pressure, though dreary both sonic-ally and lyrically, is still full of heart. Power Windows, my all-time favorite of the electronic era, is the culmination of heart and synthesizer rock at its best. I really don't know what happened on Hold Your Fire. Even with the same producer as PW, the album kind of falls flat - I feel the band just over-stayed the synth era by one album and went a little too far into pop production.
What those albums lacked in analog they made up for in soul. And coming off the heels of the 'musical precision era' (2112 through Moving Pictures), each band member's mastery of his instrument was undeniable in all the songs. The combination of those two aspects created a magnifying glass for fans and the listening public in general to really hear how precise of musicians they has become. And all the epic lyrics and vocals of the past focused Geddy's singing abilities into the best of his career. It was a digital projection of the heart of Rush.
Even though this is considered an uninteresting point in their discography, I am a proud defender of the "Synth Era." It was the part of their canon that my 16-year-old hormones latched onto - because they were playing some bad-ass off-time signatures and it was emotional at the same time. And that's why "Afterimage" and "Emotion Detector" are some of my all-time favorite Rush songs. [/i]
