jnoble

It's gets a lot of shit because,aside from one instrumental that was clearly thrown on last minute, it's plodding, too preachy and negative, and worst of all BORING.

And "half the world" statement making up more than half the words in that song. Half The World is one of the oft-hated Rush songs that I actually enjoy a lot. Maybe because it doesn't sound like a traditional Rush-type song.

Ahh, yes. If only Geddy was able to sing like that still......His voice was at it's peak circa '77/'78

:crazy: The theme song from Batman? Ummm....I can't say in the hundreds of times I've heard CL that's ever occured to me. lol

I might like The Garden better if someone else was singing it. Geddy's voice just doesn't cut it for me when he gets to the chorus

I've never understood the dislike on TRF for Superconductor. It's a fun song with a great riff.

The lines between the "boy" and "girl" in this song sound like two teens planning on running away with each other. That's my interpretation

my former neighbor gave me a bootleg CD of the album pre-release he downloaded off the net and I clearly remember listening to it on my computer thinking almost every song sounded just like the one before it. Then I got the legit one and almost tossed it out the car window at one point in frustration at how lame most of it is. Of course it didn't help reading TRF at the time "THIS ALBUM IS THE BEST SINCE MOVING PICTURES!!! A MASTERPIECE!!! OMG I JUST QUIT MY JOB SO I CAN LISTEN TO ARMOR AND SWORD FOR A WEEK STRAIGHT! GREATEST RUSH ALBUM SINCE...." etc etc etc. You know how it gets around here with new albums. :eyeroll:

I like to buy Snakes on vinyl just to smash it to pieces in the driveway. Then I can tell everyone I broke a record that day. Play me off, Sammy..... :laughing guy:

HYF is a majestic sounding melodic underrated album but I'd be lying if I denied finding myself listening to one of the really wimpy songs (both lyrically and musically) like Second Nature or Tai Shan and asking myself "dude, this is the same band that made such ass-kicking barn burning songs like Anthem... and Bastille Day.... and 2112... and Hemispheres...and Cygnus X1... and YYZ etc. What happened to these guys?!? :| It's lyrically and musically and arrangment wise a very good album for the most part (this was pre-failing voice Geddy shoehorning lyrics and the wall of layered distortion Alex sound and Neil's "the world sucks and people are mean" lyrical themes) It's just that this kind of overproduced lush sounding soft-rock wasn't what a band like Rush made themselves famous doing.

Agreed. That's yet another reason I want to see more older material, with fewer triggers and keyboards, they can afford to be more spontaneous. Of course, that didn't stop ESL from sounding like a studio album? yeah ESL is awesome but the album itself seems like a slightly raw greatest hits album...much prefer the video back then they were totally against the idea of any sort of jamming or extended sections Someone on here once described ESL as "it sounds like it was recorded with a mic wrapped in a pillow somewhere outside the arena in the parking lot" :eyeroll: I like the songs but it's such a muddy murky bass-heavy sounding mix.

I loved his Fender Jazz sound early on when they went back to a harder sound on Counterparts. It sounded GREAT on that album/tour. Unfortunatly, over the years and tours his sound just seemed to get more and more dirty/distorted and frankly, it sounds mostly shitty live now. And that greenish/blue Fender he got as a gift is one of the ugliest basses ever. Sorry Geddy lol. I've been thinking maybe he needs to go back to using amps on stage again and turn down the gain. Also, it would be really cool if he would go back to using the basses specific for songs of that era. So he plays the Rick for the '70s early '80s material and switched to the Wal for the mid '80s to early '90s stuff. I was disappointed when I heard my favorite instrumental "Where's My Thing" live recently because it just sounded way too distorted and heavy. His poppy Wal worked so good on the original and live for the RTB tour. Also, good point about the editing. Just because you can fit 13 songs on a CD doesn't mean you should if a bunch of them are mediocre or craptastic. (see: the majority of the uninspired uninteresting Snakes album) The fact that they had not two, but THREE instrumentals on that, one of which didn't even fit the feel of the rest of the album, was pure indulgence. I'm not really a fan of Clockwork but at least pretty much all the songs are there to serve the story without filler. (except for Wish, that one could've been left off without affecting anything) And there were two or three songs on Vapor Trails that could've been ditched without losing anything. I don't like Geddy's current voice when he tries to sing high. He strains and cracks terribly.The Moving Pictures songs on the TM tour sounded pretty rough with his range now. Red Barch and Limelight make me cringe in parts.However, he still sounds fine on the mid range-ey songs like Witch Hunt and Vital Signs.

His voice and delivery changed so much over the years that I can only do it by era: '70s: Fly By Night, Farewell To Kings '80s: Moving Pictures, Power Windows '90s: Presto, Counterparts '00s: Vapor Trails

I've always liked Everyday Glory. Very underrated and a good inspiring lyric for the bad times we all have at work and at home

T4E may be more balanced because there's little emotion behind it. It's, indeed, tight songwriting; but lyrically it's a blend of generic themes and insipid imagery. "Carve Away the Stone" has perhaps it's most in-depth lyrics. I don't hate Carve Away The Stone or consider it awful, but it's the most "hey, we have four minutes left to fill let's whip something out real quick" Rush song to end an album I've ever heard. It's very generic sounding for them

Ive heard for years about the studio fixing in ESL but I can't hear any of it.

It might sound dated or too Rupert Hine-ish light now, but RTB and most of CP were the last two Rush albums that I find listenable pretty much start to end. Every album after that I'm skipping around to only hear a handful of songs on each. And in the case of Snooze and Snores aka Snakes and Arrows, one maybe two songs if I'm feeling generous. That album has no idea how close it came to being thrown out of my car window at 60 mph in frustration.

I hope so. To be perfectly honest, I haven't really liked their live sound since TFE. Different Stages (the first 2 discs) sounds too damn muddy. The problem is since Alex's guitars are so distorted AND Geddy's bass sound is also highly overdriven that both together just cause a wall of noise effect. It's been that way to my ears on every album starting with TFE. Counterparts has lyrics and a theme I don't really care for, but damn was it a good sounding recording. THATS what heavy should sound like. Every album after it seemed like Alex just thought putting down layer after layer of super distorted guitars without the clever songwriting or dynamics they used to do would suffice. Also, Geddy has lost too much range on his voice to sound really good singing a 'heavy' song. In the '70s he could wail and hit those highs with no problem. Now.....not so much at all. I was cringing listening to him struggle at TSOR during the Rock N Roll HOF performance.

I don't care what era of Rush you like the best, sorry, but the debut album does NOT belong in anyone's top 5. Every album past the debut is better in every way, especially the rest of the '70s material. These guys must have been high when answering this question.

since this song is about the main character discovering the shortlived lure of a woman in his travels, the line "Pancea, liquid grace" never made sense to me. Unless 'Panacea' is a brand of beer or whiskey that particular line always baffled me :eyeroll:

I'm with you too pretty much word for word. I don't hate CA, at least they tried going back to the prog-rock story angle which is cool. I can't listen to most if any of it for the same reasons....no good hooks, little melody, dense sound, wordy lyrics that just don't lend themselves to a great rock song. And I've given it many chances like I tried to get into S&A. Multiple listens left me still feeling numb and indifferent. Like you explained, it's not one thing about modern Rush/CA that doesn't do it for me, it's a bunch of things. Production, lyrics, song structure, Geddys singing, etc. I'm going to see them in Hershey PA next month but if they announced no CA songs will be played I wouldn't have a problem with that

Rolling Stone seemed to warm up a little to our band circa Presto which they gave 3 stars to when it came out. I flip through it at the library if a band or artist I like is featured or interviewed but other than that RS is a total junk rag that tries way too hard to play up to the hipster crowd and be on the PC side of every issue. Their political reporting has the depth and logic of an angry 13 year old going through their rebellion phase. lol

Geddy HAS talked about this recently. Basically they put Neil's poem about traveling to China to music for the HYF album and in hindsight, it didn't age well. Personally, I think it's a nice sounding song but way too soft and wussy for what Rush can and should do. HYF is in a couple different ways a very good album....lyrics, melody, lush production, big soundstage and competent song composition. It's, for better or worse, very '80s sounding and a product of its time

Geddys voice hasn't been screechy or shrill since around 1983 or so. And certainly not on record post MP. Doesn't matter, the press still talks about the band like its still 1977

Just more proof that most of the talking heads and the people behind the scenes in the news business...especially the local stations...are just as stupid and clueless as they get accused of and parodied in movies like Anchorman. They often wouldn't know what to say without the TelePrompTer and even with it still get things constantly wrong. And dont get me started on the fake "witty" banter and forced laughter between stories and when they throw it to the sports or weather guy.