MOVING PICTURES

Here's an idea: take the first side of both "Moving Pictures" and "Permanent Waves" and make the single best AOR album ever released, and then put the two second sides together to make a good, conceptually interesting and thoroughly up-to-date (for 1981) heavy progressive album. While it may seem that they are sticking to a format that works, RUSH has found their perfect niche with these two recordings and nothing like them will ever be done again. The bands that started the progressive genre have either died out or gone soft on us, but this upstart trio of Canadians make the necessary strides to keep prog interesting- and fun. The presence of "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight" guarantees any real hard rock fan's vote, and "YYZ" demonstrates indisputably that the band has reached new heights of musical skill. Only the most extreme anti-rock (or anti-synth) fanatics will have any real difficulty enjoying "Moving Pictures"; for my part, "Red Barchetta" is my favorite RUSH song of all time- and achieves in six minutes what it used to take them an entire album side to do. A whole new crop of progressive fans will emerge from the wake of these albums, forming the core fanbase for DREAM THEATER, MARILLION, and so on; however, those who stuck with the band for the last several years can still proudly claim that RUSH has neither 'sold out' nor 'moved on'. You (and I) may have a personal attachment to other (most likely earlier) albums, but objectively it is all but impossible to deny that this is the band's culmination. I wish I could give it 4 1/2 stars, as the second side does lose some focus- but not enough to sacrifice its masterpiece status.