CD Odyssey Disc 397: Rush

After a long day of work, I was tired when I got home and not in the mood to write (I have been writing all day).  Of course, if you only exercise a muscle when it isn’t tired, you never get stronger.

Speaking of which, I missed the gym today.  One muscle at a time, I suppose.

   

Disc 397 is…Grace Under Pressure

Artist: Rush

Year of Release: 1984

What’s Up With The Cover?:  A pretty typical prog rock cover.  A bald albino watches a seascape melt, Dali-like, into the border of album cover itself.  Even though it is collapsing in on itself, it is still beautiful.  Get it – grace under pressure!

How I Came To Know It: Although this came out shortly after “Signals” and was therefore in the musical wheelhouse of my teenage years, I didn’t get “Grace Under Pressure” until about six or seven years ago, as I was finishing up my Rush collection.

How It Stacks Up:  I have all eighteen of Rush’ studio albums.  Competition is fierce at the top, but “Grace Under Pressure” doesn’t have to worry about that, because it is near the bottom.  I’m going to say 16^th, since there are a couple of albums I suspect might slip underneath it.

Rating: 3 stars

I have eighteen Rush albums, so I should hardly have to defend how much I like the band.  And yet, “Grace Under Pressure” tried my patience over the last couple of days.

This is the album that launched Rush in a new direction, with a lot more keyboard and a lot less of Alex Lifeson’s guitar wizardry.  They had taken tentative steps in that direction on “Signals” but on this record they push all their chips into the digital centre of the music board.

Lest you think this is the reason I don’t like this album as much as some, I would point out that 1987’s “Hold Your Fire” is one of my favourite Rush albums, and it is very much one of their eighties synth records.

I prefer “Hold Your Fire” for a couple of reasons, the first being that it is strongly melodic.  Not so, “Grace Under Pressure” which seems very experimental.  Rush has found a new artistic expression here, and they are determined – in Rush-like fashion – to explore it to its very edges.

It is an admirable quality, and it delivers a couple of brilliant songs when it feels like all the creative energy is rowing in the same direction.  When Lifeson’s guitar is mixed with the keyboard sound, like on the instrumental section of “Afterimage” it is a thing of beauty.  This song strongly reminded me of Blue Oyster Cult’s album from the previous year, “The Revolution By Night” and this was a good thing.

Unfortunately, at other times they seem more interested in combining as many disjointed sounds together as humanly possible.  The beginning of “The Body Electric” is a spastic combination of drum machines stripping Neil Peart of his power, and guitar licks that are good, but so far back in the mix for most of the song that they are an afterthought.  At one point I swear I hear someone playing the triangle because – well, because.

Then, “The Body Electric” brings the second reason I prefer “Hold Your Fire”; better lyrics.  “The Body Electric” is a song about an android trying to escape its programming and realize true intelligence.  At least I think that’s what it is about.  It is actually a pretty cool concept, but the chorus is “1-0-0-1-0-0-1.”  Seriously.  I’m sorry, but that’s just a bit too binary for my organic chemistry to appreciate.

“Kid Gloves” has fairly strong lyrics about the loss of innocence, and although I don’t like the song that much, I’ll give it credit for that.  Not so, “red lenses” which follows up with some terribly strained rhymes:

“I see red

It hurts my head

Guess it must be something

That I read.”

Peart is one of rock and roll’s great thinkers, and great lyricists, and it is sad to see him miss like this.  The tune was also practically unfollowable musically for me, although I did appreciate the gratuitous cowbell.  There is no such thing as too much cowbell.

So, that’s the bad stuff, but fortunately there are a couple of absolute gems on this record that make up for a lot, and have me still pulling this off the shelf despite its shortcomings.

The first is the single that was released, “Distant Early Warning”, a reference to the DEW line, set up to monitor Canada’s north from Soviet incursion.

It needs to be remembered that “Grace Under Pressure” came out at the height of the Cold War.  Reagan was demanding the Russians tear down the wall, and a barrage of missiles from the two superpowers pointed at one another ready to destroy the entire human civilization.  If you were a teenager back, you seriously doubted our chances to get out of it alive.

“Distant Early Warning” somehow captures the spirit of that age, but thoughtfully, rather than in an angry or panicky way.  The tune is sublime and the use of keyboard and synthesizer is absolutely perfect for the mood.  Whatever production challenges this record has elsewhere, I wouldn’t change a thing about “Distant Early Warning.”  The keyboard chords are stark, and full of ill omens and portents.  The guitar driven chorus follows on, before the song returns to a simple and subdued bass line.  Again, Lifeson’s guitar work had me thinking of similar work from B.O.C.’s Buck Dharma, again in a good way.  Atop it, Lee’s vocals give voice to Peart’s lyrical plea for the world to embrace some common sense:

“Left and rights of passage

Black and whites of youth

Who can face the knowledge

That the truth is not the truth?

Obsolete

Absolute

Absalom.”

The other amazing track on this album is one of my all-time favourite Rush songs, “Red Sector A.”  Musically, all of the perfect notes struck in “Distant Early Warning” are hit again, an appropriately troubling bass-line that would be home on “Another Brick In The Wall,” and keyboards as grandiose as church organs and even Peart’s drums sounding tough in the mix.

The song is about a family living in a concentration camp, starving and bereft of hope.  It could very easily be about the Nazi death camps of World War Two, given that Geddy Lee’s mother was an actual survivor of one of those camps.  The best image:

“For my father and my brother it’s too late

But I must help my mother stand up straight.”

I like the way this evokes an image of a young boy being comforted by a mother’s arm around his shoulder, but in his own mind he is standing up straight and supporting her.  This basic human response is important to me, because the chorus of “Red Sector A” asks”

“Are we the last ones left alive?

Are we the only human beings to survive?”

Speaking of basic human response, this section makes you wonder what it might be like in some apocalyptic future where the earth itself is conquered, and instead of putting each other in concentration camps, our entire race ended up there.

Like any great song, it leaves that open to interpretation, and just focuses on the emotional core even in the most awful of experiences.

While “Red Sector A” and “Distant Early Warning” are rock classics in my mind, they aren’t enough to elevate the entire album to where it needs to be all on their own.  They are enough to elevate it from simply average to good, however.

Best tracks: Distant Early Warning, Red Sector A.