CD Odyssey Disc 410: Rush

I’m home from a long day at the office and looking forward to the review.  Sheila is out tonight for dinner with a friend so I have a window to get my blog in before she gets home.  I’ll try to cover as many points on this amazing album as I can before I run out of time, shotgun style.  Bonus points to anyone who can tell me a second reason this would be considered a shotgun review.

Disc 410 is…Hold Your Fire 

Artist: Rush

Year of Release: 1987

What’s up with the Cover?  A typically prog rock cover.  Three balls of colour hang motionless, seemingly stuck in time over a background of the same deep red.  I love this cover’s simplicity, but the same red colour is used on the back, and the black writing is hard to read on top of it.  Otherwise, I have no complaints.

How I Came To Know It: This is my ninth Rush review, so by now you’ll know that I grew up listening to Rush, although mostly albums previous to this one.  When this came out in 1987 it didn’t really register with me, which was my loss as it turned out.  I’ve had it now since it was remastered on CD in the late 1990s.

How It Stacks Up:  I have all 18 of Rush’s studio albums, and am quite excited that later this week their 19^th is being released. While not a big deal for either avowed Rush fans or the masses, “Hold Your Fire” speaks to me and I think it is between 3^rd and 5^th best, up there with classics like “Fly By Night”, “2112”, and “Caress of Steel” – and probably speaks more deeply to me than all of those.

Rating: 4 stars but a very thin line from 5.

Rush often gets panned for their ‘synth pop’ period, and when I recently reviewed “Grace under Pressure” I too had a mixed opinion.  However, knowing that the experiments undertaken on “Grace under Pressure” and later “Power Windows” would eventually lead to the masterpiece that is “Hold Your Fire” makes any missteps along the way well worth it.

Yes, Rush left some fans behind with their creative conversion to drum machine sounds, and organ over their original guitar driven progressive rock.  They left me behind as well for a time.  The fuzzy production on 1983’s “Signals” annoys me to this day, and I simply found other music to pursue for the latter half of the eighties.

In the process, though, I glossed over Rush’s best work in this period, “Hold Your Fire.” It is my distinct regret that this album has really only been in my life for fifteen years, when it could have been twenty-five.

So what did they do right?  Firstly, they finally manage to perfectly meld their complex arrangements to the new sound.  The ‘electronic percussion’ (drum machine) works in the mix where on so many albums of this period, like Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love” or Tom Petty’s “Southern Accents” it falls flat and hollow.  “Hold Your Fire” is Rush going all-in for the sound, and not trying to hold onto past successes from their work in the seventies.  The Petty and Springsteen albums have great writing diminished by inappropriate arrangements.  Rush builds the songs to the sound from the ground up.  It is brave and crazy, and it works.

Am I disappointed that Alex Lifeson’s guitar is so muted on the record?  In a way yes, but that’s not what this record is about any more than the cowbells you’ll hear on their 1974 debut.  There is a time and a place for everything.

I also believe this is one of Geddy Lee’s greatest vocal performances.  Sure he shows more range on earlier albums, but on “Hold Your Fire” he takes time to really wrap himself emotionally and intellectually around Neil Peart’s lyrics.  He sings them with conviction, and helps them sink into the listener.

And there is a lot to sink in on this album.  I read a recent interview of Peart where he talks about how he gets an idea or a theme in his head and he works through it in depth, and that is definitely true of “Hold Your Fire.”  Here we have a record where the band is at a mid-point of its journey musically, maybe even a crossroads, given the mixed reception they were receiving from fans.

Peart explores the importance of taking the time to look around on life’s road at these moments; not to be too focused on where you’ve been, or where you’re going next.  Never is this better expressed than in the perfectly constructed “Time Stand Still”:

“I let my skin get too thin

I’d like to pause,

No matter what I pretend

Like some pilgrim –

Who learns to transcend –

Learns to live

As if each step was the end.

“I’m not looking back –

But I want to look around me now

See more of the people

And the places that surround me now.

“Freeze this moment a little bit longer

Make each sensation a little bit stronger.”

Listening to this on my walk to work I couldn’t help but be filled with marvel at the present, and how we walk through it without paying attention.  It made me pay attention.  I don’t know what it was, maybe the combination of the lyrics, and the engaging inspirational tune.  Maybe it was the ethereal beauty of AimeeMann’s background vocals singing “time stand still” elfin-like in the background.  Whatever it was, time might not have stood still, but I could imagine it flowing around me like a river.  It’s not every day a five minute rock song gives you a new appreciation of time, movement and the very human experience of being conscious of both things even happening.

There are a lot of great ‘take a look around’ moments on “Hold Your Fire” including the opening track “Force Ten” reminding us that “we can rise and fall like empires/Flow in and out like the tide” and on “Prime Mover”:

“From the point of ignition

To the final drive

The point of the journey

Is not to arrive.”

Of course, I did arrive at work (after all, they pay me) but I had a new appreciation for every experience along the way, and then through the day.  I’ve listened to this album dozens if not hundreds of times, and it got to me all over again.

For Rush awareness starts (and maybe ends) with self-awareness.  The songs are not just about consciousness, but our unconscious minds as well.  On “Lock and Key” Geddy sings:

“We carry a sensitive cargo

Below the waterline

Ticking like a time bomb

With a primitive design.

…

“I don’t want to face

The killer instinct

Face it in you or me

And so I keep it under lock and key.”

We’re conscious, but we’re not far removed from the lizard brain.  “Lock and Key” reminds me that these undercurrents to our genetic makeup aren’t going anywhere.  We need to reconcile them to our ‘civilized’ self or we risk letting them drag us back into deep waters that our ancestors spent a lot of time and effort crawling out of (and yes, the album features a wonderfully geeky song about this exact evolutionary notion – “High Water).”

And finally, Rush reminds us that being aware of our place in time, and in touch with our own limitations at the same time, the next step in our evolution is empathy.  “Second Nature” opens with an echoing organ, a near-divine invocation for us to care more about one another.  A song on par with Pink Floyd’s “On The Turning Away” the lyrics are beautiful and inspirational, but since I’ve already heavily quoted other lyrics, and since I can’t preach it anywhere close to the way Geddy Lee sings it, I’ll just suggest you go and look it up on YouTube.

The best thing about this album is how everyone – not just Lifeson – dial their own egos back in service to a higher cause.  Lee sings with passion instead of power, and Peart writes about awareness and humility and – even more tellingly – lends a relaxed feel to his drumming.

I get that “Hold Your Fire” isn’t for everyone.  Those who only want Rush to rock out, will not get their fix here.  If you want Rush at their most musically complicated, this is definitely not for you either – stick to “Hemispheres” or “2112” and you’ll be well served.  Maybe the eighties production is so hated to your ear you can’t get past it to hear the music – I am always surprised that I can do it.

 “Turn the Page” is the one song that is a bit silly, and poorly constructed, but not so much to knock me out of the groove by the time it shows up at track eight.  “Tai Shan” has been panned by critics for its dissonance with the rest of the songs on the album (it takes inspiration in topic and construction from traditional Chinese music) but I love it.  “Open Secrets” always sounds to me like Rush is borrowing from Blue Oyster Cult’s sound on 1983’s “Revolution by Night.”  I happen to love Blue Oyster Cult so, again, I’m not complaining.

I’ve yet to run into someone who likes the album as much as I do, and even though critically, there are at least three or four records I should rank above it, I’ve got to be honest with myself.  The honest truth is that I like the way this album gets my head talking to my heart, and along the way gives me some time signature changes and pretty melodies to keep the music interesting as well.

Best tracks:  I like almost all of the tracks but Time Stand Still, Second Nature, Prime Mover, Lock and Key, and Tai Shan have particular appeal.