GRACE UNDER PRESSURE

My introduction to Rush was a rather odd one in that I fell in love with them with the Counterparts album and then just as quickly fell out of love with them with the albums that followed: Test for Echo and Vapor Trails. But then as I developed a taste for prog, I went back and looked at their older material and found that I really enjoyed 2112, A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres. Now I am delving into the '80s.

Rush certainly creates an atmosphere with this album, with the spacey keyboards providing a good fit along with the overwhelming lyrical theme. The problem I have with this album is that it sounds very "dated." Twenty-three years after release, so many of these songs sound...well, 23 years old. That's not necessarily always a bad thing, but I find that in this case it really detracts from the quality of the music.

I find that I really like Distant Early Warning and Red Sector A (the two songs from this album which also made it onto the excellent compilation album Chronicles). I also enjoy the final song on the album, Between the Wheels. Everything else is forgettable, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I find a couple of the songs just downright bad (The Enemy Within and Kid Gloves).

As much as I'd like to give this talented trio a higher grade with this effort, I can only recommend it for serious Rush collectors.