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Red3angel
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I'd put the last three studio albums up against any other three in the catalog. They're that good.

Surprisingly strong for a band that had been around so long. I rank it just slightly below S&A, which is one of my favorites ever.

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I appreciated their return to an epic album with a storyline concept but the final results render it unlistenable for me. The songs are too long, too dense, the mix sucks, Geddy's voice is weak plus I can't even make out most of what he's singing.

If someone were to remix the album into pure instrumentals using the riffs from the heavier songs that would actually probably be pretty cool. If anything, Ged and Alex were always good at coming up with riffs and parts even if they didn't result in a coherent memorable song.

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I'd put the last three studio albums up against any other three in the catalog. They're that good.

I think if you pare them down to 40 min each, you have a case.

 

Wouldn't cut a song. But that's just me. Total album experiences.

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I think it was their best album since Signals.

 

I don't think it's a great album but it was very ambitious and a great accomplishment for the band at that stage of their career.

 

In retrospect (which seems really obvious now but wasn't at the time) there were a lot of hints in the album that they suspected it could be their last.

 

Lyrically there's definitely a lot of swan song signalling.

 

I think even though I got into Rush the very summer CA came out, it seemed to me at the time to have an air of finality about it. When R40 was sorta kinda advertised as maybe a last tour a few years later, I wasn't surprised. Though I held out hope for a long time they would get back in the studio and make one more record. Really until a year or so before Neil passed.

 

I thought they were done after that. As close to perfection as they ever got. They got to the top of the mountain. R40 was the visual coda. Then the R40 Tour was announced and I was very surprised and figure this was their goodbye and I needed to be there to say "thank you."

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If you judge Rush albums on whether they include a closing track deemed worthy of being played in concert, then Clockwork was the best since Power Windows :)

 

I don't judge them on that basis but as you said it was the last final track since Mystic Rhythms to be played live.

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I feel like Geddy's singing was the elephant in the room for the last period of their career. There was lots of talk about "these guys keep getting better" and "they're at the top of their game" in the 2000s-2010s, and all of that ignored the fact that the quality of his singing really dropped. I don't expect a 60 something to be able to sing like his or her 20 something self...but I DO expect them to understand that fact, and along with their producer, to make choices accordingly. Part of the issue with having a fan like Nick Raskulinecz in the producer's chair was that it seemed like he thought "oh, let's just have Geddy sing like he did on Permanent Waves - that record's awesome!" and so we end up with him compromising diction for range. I have NO idea what the hell he is singing half the time on Clockwork Angels...which is very unusual for a Rush album - a big feature of their sound to me is the almost over-enunciated nature of his vocals.

 

I think as Geddy's range started to naturally drop in the 90s, he was making choices about his range that made sense - I think his singing on Counterparts, for instance, is very good because he's not going for stuff that makes him stretch too much. (Continuing to sing the old songs in the same keys live for the next decade + is another issue....)

 

I honestly think that having a "fan" produce them was a mistake...or at least what was gained (someone pushing them to extend instrumental passages and be more daring with arrangements) is washed out by what is lost in the vocal performance. I can only imagine it like an emperor's new clothes situation.... where no one was willing to say "I have no idea what words you are singing through most of these songs." It's a shame, because I think there are some interesting things on the record...

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Nick R and Rupert Hine were polar opposites producing Rush. Hine seemed to hold them back in a bland safe zone hence Presto and RTB which had some great songs but at the same time were very restrained especially vocally on RTB while on the other end of the spectrum, fanboy Nick R pushed them hard to be heavier then they were capable of by that point.
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If CA was produced by Terry Brown and sung by 1976 Geddy, the results would have been much better

 

If side one had been produced by Terry Brown and sung by 1975 Geddy and side two produced by Peter Collins and sung by 1987 Geddy... somebody might've freaked out and quit the band.

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