[REVIEW] Rush’s “Clockwork Angels”
After 44 years, the holy triumvirate that is Rush is still recording top-notch songs and outdoing their masterworks of decades past.
Clockwork Angels, the new album by every teenage nerd’s favourite Canadian progressive rock band, is a dozen heavy doses of euphoric fantasy tunes over the course of an hour by vocalist and bassist Geddy Lee, drummer Neil Peart and guitarist Alex Lifeson.
Any hopeless bromantic who’s watched I Love You, Man too many times from their jerk-off station will automatically love the new album. But for lesser fans and non-fans alike, there’s at least one good song for everyone from the band’s 20th studio album.
Track Listing:
- “Caravan”
- “BU2B”
- “Clockwork Angels”
- “The Anarchist”
- “Carnies”
- “Halo Effect”
- “Seven Cities of Gold”
- “The Wreckers”
- “Headlong Flight”
- “BU2B2”
- “Wish Them Well”
- “The Garden”
The album opens with “Caravan”, the first single, released two years before Clockwork Angels hit shelves. The title track features inspiration from blues while weaving them with intergalactic sounds and echoes.
It goes through the upbeat “The Anarchist” and the eerie “Carnies” leading into the album’s second single, “Headlong Flight”. Geddy Lee discussed the song with Rolling Stone:
“
‘Headlong Flight’ was one of those songs that was a joy to write and record from beginning to end. Alex and I had blast jamming in my home studio one day before the second leg of the Time Machine tour, and I did not revisit that jam until a year later. Alex and I assembled the song to be an instrumental and its original title was ‘Take That Lampshade Off Yo Head!,’ but once we saw the lyrics Neil had written, I knew that the spirit of the lyrics matched the instrumental perfectly and it was just a matter of making them fit and writing the melodies.
”
The album has been widely praised – from Classic Rock Magazine to The A.V. Club – and rightfully so. While other bands approaching a half-century of touring and recording have gotten rustier than their first guitar’s strings, Rush have maintained a very strong-willed, lucid sound that continues to age gracefully. They are the world’s hardest-rocking trio, and that’s what fans both expect from them and take for granted. Fortunately, this album won’t let you down.
-
haterofallmankind reblogged this from shotattheshow
-
petesnose likes this
-
justiceagainstthehangedman likes this
-
shotattheshow posted this
