HEMISPHERES

This is the pinnacle moment in Rush's long career. They took the lyrical themes of the previous album, perfected the musical aspect that somewhat lacked in 'A Farewell To Kings', and just made this beautiful work of art. 'Hemispheres' was always a wonderful album by the heavy prog band, the continuation of 'Cygnus X-1' in our Book II: Hemispheres.

I've seen complaints and praises, but I find that my overall thoughts on the song are more on the side with praising this piece. I like the odd times that start the song off, it fits very well with the first part of Cygnus X-1. This isn't as space rock oriented as the previous chapter, but I like the more formulated and more classic Rush tonality of the second chapter perhaps more than the first part. The lyrics work as a sequel to Cygnus X-1 Chapter 1, its a good way to continue the two part series. We open with reverse faded guitars, and end off with acoustic guitars.

'Circumstances' has always been a really well written piece in my honest opinion, the elements that capture the ears most is Geddy Lee mastering the more loose cannon vocals of those days, and the lyrics. The song itself isn't amazing, but it's short and catchy, the lyrics and Geddy's voice are the elements that really work for me. Geddy sounds great here, he use of vocal fluctuations work incredibly. Usually I find that when he screams like that, his voice can come off a bit out of control and sometimes out of key, which turns out to be a common issue on '2112'.

'The Trees' is a well written piece by the band about communism, a fictional debate between trees act for the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Neil Peart was a huge fan of the libertarian mindset, and this song was conveying the message that communism doesn't work. As someone who usually isn't a fan of political lyrics, this song does the political themes really well and shows that Neil was against the communist and socialist parties and mindsets. The song in general is extremely well written, great playing overall, great chord progressions, and most importantly, Geddy still sounds great here.

'La Villa Strangiato' is the grand finale of this brilliant album, the instrumental to end us off and it's a doozy. The instrumentation, the chord progression, the mood and feel, the opening of finger style classical nylon guitar playing, and then getting into the song with a bang. This is a top 10 Rush song because of the role it plays in their discography, Rush was good at doing instrumental parts in songs but hadn't really tried a full instrumental track before. This opened the doors and showed that they could write a full instrumental, and they would continue doing it. So what are my final thoughts? This happens to be Rush's masterpiece, they have a few albums that are just as good as this but this is where they had perfected their signature sound.