gorinosho

I have been known to get a bit fixated on particular albums at various points in my life, but this one has me thinking I might need counselling for music addiction. Every song is awesome but The Garden is the one song I keep playing (and re-playing) in the car. I cannot imagine what it must be like to BE these guys, to have got towards the very end of an indisputably monumental career, and to pop out a big one like this. It's like if Secretariat sired a horse better than himself in his very last act at stud. It just isn't plausible, but here it is, something almost as unexpected.

Here are these three wonderfully talented musicians, now in their sixties, who release an album that is widely considered to be a truly monumental rock album with lasting appeal beyond the fanbase and even the genre, and you fools are sitting around talking about how you might have done it better. Really. So what, there is no instrumental. As a standard formulaic album component for many rock bands, the instrumental has outlived it's usefulness. It just isn't needed when you have expansive and complex songs like The Garden with wonderful long soliloquies where Alex and Geddy get their groove on and play around within the wider musical patterning. I for one believe that the absence of the instrumental track on this album helps it maintain the force and depth of delivery that make it an instant classic while also making it somewhat more accessible to the less Rush-loving wider public. They are Rush, and none of you could improve on it.

I keep thinking that there is something about Clockwork Angels that seems to be paying homage to the album Five Miles Out, by Mike Oldfield. No it isn't just that both albums have clouds on the cover, there are musical motifs that anyone familiar with both albums might recognise.

I have been listening to Rush since 1987, and for many years 2112 was the benchmark album for me, but loved them all. This album just blows me away - I have become used to other bands I like that have been around for a long time releasing "just good enough" albums, sometimes even moving into the disappointing range. I felt a bit that way about Caravan in 2010, and I first listened to CA not really expecting anything particularly memorable. Most Rush albums take some time to grow on me, but this one just astonished me from the moment I heard it, and it keeps getting better the more I listen to it (which is too often). But THE GARDEN is the killer track. When I am in the car I find myself often pushing the back button as the album finishes, just to hear that track once more. I even think (not in a morbid way) that it's probably a song I'd want played at my funeral or wake or whatever. So yeah, I know what you mean about "The Garden Trance", I've got it bad! Also rate Available Light up there with it as one of their best songs ever, but Presto as an album was not as strong as Clockwork Angels. I just hope this is NOT their Magnum Opus, and there's something better still to come! BTW Rush, come and tour Australia!!!!!