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Is HYF really that bad?


Gedneil Alpeart
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HYF is my favorite 2.gif album. Force 10 is one of their best ever. To me it's their "coming-of-age" album. It sounds like it was made by adults.
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QUOTE
Is HYF really that bad?

No.

 

The bass tone isn't so great, and certainly doesn't do justice to some of Geddy's best-ever playing and instrumentation, and the tinkly keyboards date the album by at least as much as Power Windows (interestingly, the only post-1975 Rush albums that really sound badly dated), and the lyrics in some places are kind of iffy (for example, I totally disagree about "Second Nature"), but it's a really good album. "Force Ten", "Time Stand Still", "Open Secrets", "Prime Mover", "Lock & Key", and "High Water" are big favorites for me.

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QUOTE (KevinDallas @ Jul 4 2007, 02:02 PM)
It sounds like it was made by adults.

Sounds like it was made by very dull people who are afraid of cranking up their guitars. It's of it's time and is now quite, quite unlistenable.

Give me the charming naivete of teh early stuff over this overly manicured candy floss for the ears.

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QUOTE (Gedneil Alpeart @ Jun 22 2007, 11:28 AM)
I listened to HYF after a long time yesteday. What a beautiful piece of work. The music is so dynamic and there's such beautiful song writing and deeply moving lyrics. A very heartfelt and contemplative record. A lot here don't like it. For some reason lately, I too have tended to skp this album a lot, but I feel I'm missing out! It's a very poppish sounding record by classic Rush standards, but also very colorful and with good range. The whole record has a really dynamic and deep personality.

Listen to the lyrics of Second Nature. Absolutely beautiful. Talks so much about social bonds and the distances between us. The lyrics cry out for a more compassionate and generous world. Brings tears to my eyes sometimes.

I love HYF. Think there's some great songs on there for the most part (a couple I can't stand but that's OK). I'm glad they decided to get away from the synth sound after it & I agree with their saying that it was they were looking for in that synth period. I listen to it a lot.

 

Better than RTB by a mile...oh & Presto too.

 

trink39.gif

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Hello,

To be honest,HYF is one of my favourites.I like 'Open secrets','Time stand still' and 'Lock and key'.a lot.

I think 'the mission 'is probably one of the most 'Yes' sounding songs that Rush have done.

I think it has a different feel to some of their albums,but it very much 'complete' ie needs nothing added.

 

Regards Hammersmith2

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Unlike Many I really Liked HYF when it first came out , Like many of the Post Signals Albums by the late 90's they starting collecting some dust .

 

Before the latest concert I broke out all the CDs and was in Rush Mode only for a couple of Months.

 

Hold Your Fire .. to me just did not age well for me, it just sounds dated to me while MP , PeW , Hem , 2112 etc are classic and timeless.

 

The only other album that I really Liked that I feel the same way about is Powere Windows

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Hold Your Fire is definitely the weakest link of Rush's 'synth era.' There is, of course, some wonderful tracks: "Force Ten," "Time Stand Still," "Prime Mover," "Lock And Key," "Mission"...

I think Hold Your Fire mostly suffers a production issue - it's too 'echoey.' While this particular sound works on tracks like "Force Ten" and "High Water," it definitely hurts some others, like "Open Secrets".

There's also a couple tracks that are near the bottom of the Rush catalog - "Second Nature," while having some great lyrics, sounds lifeless musically except for a couple parts. "Tai Shan" is simply just a failed experiment about a mountain in China.

Also, the album cover is bland. It's just a red background with three circles. Genesis had better album covers in the 80's than this!

 

Here's my ranking of HYF songs:

 

10. "Tai Shan"

9. "Second Nature"

8. "Turn The Page"

7. "High Water"

6. "Open Secrets"

5. "Lock And Key"

4. "Force Ten"

3. "Prime Mover"

2. "Mission"

1. "Time Stand Still"

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It's actually one of my fav '80s era Rush albums but yes, that dated echo-y everything-drenched-in-reverb sound...

I'd love to hear a modern sounding remix from the master tapes. Lose the reverb and dry out the sound a bit.

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It's actually one of my fav '80s era Rush albums but yes, that dated echo-y everything-drenched-in-reverb sound...

I'd love to hear a modern sounding remix from the master tapes. Lose the reverb and dry out the sound a bit.

Yeah, it's the best of the Big Three synth period. The songs are superior and Ged's vocals were entering their best period.

But as you said, that synth sound.... ugh. Mission sounds like it was recorded on the "cathedral" setting on a tiny Casio keyboard.

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Its nowhere even close to bad, and Rush DOES have a couple of really bad albums. The lyrics are among Neil's all time best, and the musicianship is just outrageous. I can somewhat sympathize with those who don't like the production values of this period, and "Tai Shan" does admittedly have its cringeworthy moments. Other than that, it is an extremely good album, easily in my top 10 favorite Rush releases. Edited by mattroland76
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I liked the optimistic lyrics on HYF. I'll take them any day over the sour "people are mean, religion is dumb, the world kind of sucks" themes of the last three Rush albums.

(And yes, I'm well aware Neil's losses in the late '90s changed him and altered his outlook. I'm just sayin'...Upbeat optimistic Rush moves me more than cynical cranky downbeat Rush)

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I do not think it is a bad album at all...and a major thing I would say in it's defence is it makes some interesting choices. I also find some of the lyrics quite resonant. BUT, I do think it is undeniably the first Rush album where the quality feels spread thin. I don't think there is totally obvious "filler" on it...I have a few songs I would cut for sure, but I know they would be songs that others consider the best on the album...but there is a condensed, concentrated quality to the albums that come before it that I don't think ever came back. Part of that is the medium itself - albums up to that point were 40-45 minutes long, where after that they were often working with an extra 10 or so minutes of time. For me, this makes everything feel slightly less potent, up to and including Clockwork Angels.

 

I think if HYF was made in the 43 minute era of their output...we might not have, say, Tai Shan, High Water and let's say Second Nature...but the songs that remained might have some of the ideas from these three songs crammed into them somewhere. More concentrated.

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I'd take HYF, on the whole, over any album that came after. Among its other merits, it (like PoW) contains some of the most inventive, intricate bass playing of Geddy's career. He had a strong ear for melody during that period too.

 

But I got into the band in the spring of '85 so, to me, that more orchestrated approach with a lot of keyboard textures was the sound of Rush at the time I boarded the train. And of course I'm more into synths than I suspect many Rush fans probably are, so I suppose I tend to hear those mid '80s records a little differently. (That said, there are a few keyboard parts on HYF, like that Emulator II shakuhachi sample that worked better on the intro of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" than it did in the overly repetitive way it was used on "Tai Shan", that even I don't entirely dig in hindsight, hehe.)

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I've said it many times on here and I'll continue saying it: HYF should've ended appropriately with Turn The Page which would've cleverly hinted at the band ending it's keyboard phase and looking towards the new direction of wherever the next album took them. But nooooo...They just had to ruin it with the final two songs which not only aren't that good but lyrically don't really fit with the rest of the album

So basically I like to pretend Turn The Page was the last song and Tai Shan/High Water were bonus tracks

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The album just lacks something. The structure of the songs, writing, melodies, musical performances were excellent. Amazing bass and drum performances. Alex, when he was allowed to play, wrote some really interesting stuff. But it was thin, somehow, despite the above accolades, sterile. Didn't sound at all like Rush. I remember the first time I heard anything from it, I turned on the radio and there was some song on, instrumental section and I thought, wow that is great drumming, who is this? Then Ged came in. NEW RUSH!!! Only way I knew was Ged's voice. Just no balls and chunk at all in that album. Just pretty and soft. I think if the same songs had been written and played with guitars it could have been an amazing album. You know except the last two songs that were just mistakes.
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No, it isn't. It's such a beautiful album, touching in many levels. It has grown to be one of my favourite Rush albums.
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This album had a different production quality that really stood out for me at the time. There is a depth and breadth to this recording that I hadn't heard before. Remember that this was 1987 and still at the cusp of the vinyl to CD transition. Yeah, they were still inspired by the keyboard-synth approach to song writing, but I really liked what they were doing at the time. Saw them at Joe Louis Arena in April '88 and they were as dynamic live as I had ever seen them. Nostalgia means I'll always love this album, but it really is a fine recording.
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It was the mid/late 80's and it was popular and common for rock albums to have loads of echo & reverb on almost every instrument. I'd love to hear a modern remix of HYF with all that reverb stripped away and pushed back and a drier sound
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Between Second Nature and Tai Shan, it really was stunning how wimpy polite and soft Rush got. When I first got into the bandit in 1991 it was jarring how this was the same group who wrote 2112, Anthem, Something For Nothing, etc
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