When Rush issued Vapor Trails in 2002, they revealed that -- even after Neil Peart's personal tragedies in the 1990s had cast the group's future in doubt -- they were back with a vengeance. The sound was hard-hitting, direct, and extremely focused. Lyrically, Peart went right after the subject matter he was dealing with -- and it was in the aftermath of 9/11 as well, which couldn't help but influence his lyric writing. In 2004 the band issued a covers EP that was in one way a toss-off, but in another a riotous act of freewheeling joy that offered a side of the band no one had heard for 30 years. There were a couple of live offerings and a 30th anniversary project as well that kept fans happy perhaps, but broke -- though Rush in Rio was the kind of live album every band hopes to record. Snakes & Arrows represents the band's 18th studio album. Produced by Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Velvet Revolver, Superdrag), the record is another heavy guitar, bass, and drums...drums...and more drums record. The title came -- unconsciously according to Peart -- from a centuries-old Buddhist game of the same name about karma, and also from a play on the words of the children's game Chutes and Ladders. Its subject matter is heavy duty: faith and war. From the opening track (and first single), acoustic and electric guitars, bass hum, and Peart's crash-and-thrum urgency in the almighty riff are all present. When Geddy Lee opens his mouth, you know you are in for a ride: "Pariah dogs and wandering madmen/Barking at strangers and speaking in tongues/The ebb and flow of tidal fortune/Electrical charges are charging up the young/It's a far cry from the world we thought we'd inherit/It's a far cry from the way we thought we'd share it...." At the same time, inside the frame of the refrain, Lee refuses to be conquered in the face of chaos: "One day I feel like I'm ahead of the wheel/And the next it's rolling over me/I can get back on/I can get back on." Alex Lifeson's guitars swell and Peart's crash cymbals ride the riff and push Lee to sing above the wailing fray. Great beginning.
"Armor and Sword" contains an instrumental surprise. After an initial ride-cymbal clash, the guitar and bassline sound exactly like King Crimson playing something from Red or Larks' Tongues in Aspic. The theme is repeated on an acoustic guitar before Lee begins singing about the shadowy side of human nature brought on by the many times children are scarred in development. The boom and crackle of electric guitars and bass are all there, but so is that sense of melody that Rush have trademarked as Lee states, "...No one gets to their heaven without a fight/We hold beliefs as a consolation/A way to take us out of ourselves...." There is no screed for or against religion per se, but a stake in the claim of hope and faith as absolutely necessary to accomplish anything, hence the refrain. Peart beautifully articulates the dark side of life's undersurface; he has been writing the best lyrics of his entire career on the band's last two studio records -- only two in the last ten years. The dynamic works against the melody and Lifeson's brief but screaming solo is a fine cap on it. "Workin' Them Angels" blends the acoustic against the electrics gorgeously, and Lee sings counterpoint to the guitars. "The Larger Bowl" is one of those Rush tunes that builds and builds both lyrically and musically, beginning with only Lee's voice and Lifeson's acoustic guitar. Its shift-and-knot rhythms and spatial dynamics offer the impression -- as does the rest of the album -- that the bandmembers are playing in the same room at the same time (it happened to a lesser degree on Vapor Trails, but here the impression is constant). The sounds -- both hard and soft -- blend together wonderfully. The live feel of the record with its sonic washes and overdubbed guitars and vocals creates near chaos without loss of control. It's like teetering on the edge of an abyss with one eye on both sides of it. Song by song, the notions of tension build, taking the listener to a place where hope and faith are challenged continually, not only in the face of the entire world, but in one's personal relationships -- check "Spindrift." Echoes of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Robert Frost, Matthew Arnold, and The Odyssey are glanced upon, as is The Dhammapada in the Buddhist scriptures -- with more of a thematic than referential purpose.
Amid all this seriousness, there is a bit of humor. The instrumental track "Malignant Narcissism" references a line in the comedic film Team America: World Police from Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park fame. It comes from a line in the film that reveals how terrorists think. It's one of three absolutely stunning instrumentals; another is "The Main Monkey Business," which sounds like the closest Rush have gotten to jamming in the studio in over 20 years. Think of the intensity of 2112 with the musicianship of Vapor Trails, and you begin to get a picture: screaming guitars, deep bass thrum, soaring keyboards, and all those pop-and-boom drums from Peart's massive kit. "The Way the Wind Blows" is Rush taking on the lues in massive metallic style, and it feels more like Cream in the intro. Lee's vocal drives deep inside the lyric -- it's tense, paranoid, yet revelatory. It's about the perverse magnetism of religion and war, and how both are seemingly designed to be cause and effect: fanatical religiosity leads to war. There are different theories on this, but Peart distills them well, as if he's read (but not necessarily completely understood) René Girard's seminal work Violence and the Sacred. The album changes pace a bit with the instrumental "Hope," a largely 12-string acoustic guitar piece played off a medieval theme by Lifeson. "Faithless" is anything but. It's one of those Rush tracks where counterpoint vocals against the guitars and basslines create that unique welling of sound that occurs when the band is at its peak on-stage. The set ends with "We Hold On," a track that expresses the sum total of all the struggles life offers and holds. Here Eliot the poet is quoted directly at the end of the third verse. It's anthemic, with backmasked guitars, Peart playing actual breaks, and Lee's bass holding the chaos together with a constant pulsing throb, guiding the various knotty musical changes back to the center of the verse and refrain, which is the place where the cut just explodes in sonic fury. Snakes & Arrows is one of the tightest conceptual records the band has ever released. Musically, it is as strong as their very best material, without a lapse in texture, composition, production, musicianship, or sheer ock intensity. There are real heart and fire in this album. It was well worth waiting for.
What am I suppose to do? Where are the words that will make you see. What I beleive is true? (RUSH) Hear the song 'Spindrift' by RUSH from their 2007 cd 'SNAKES and ARROWS' at you know.......And now to NFL Week 6. In my 50 -50 games I like INDIANAPOLIS over Baltimore 26 - 20. Ravens aren't gonna win at INDY are they? I also like DALLAS over Arizona 30 -27, but with the Cardinals covering the +5...
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Life's been a bit busy lately. Was busy with the holidays and now I'm serving on the Grand Jury, trying to get furniture for my new apartment, trying to figure out things with my private practice, etc.I did get a chance to see Rush at Madison Square Garden sometime in mid-September and finally getting around to post about it today.Most times when Rush comes around, one of my college roommates, ...
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Anybody can play air guitar. Really. What's there to it? Hold an imaginary guitar, dance around, rock out, and you're more than halfway there. But air drums? That takes some practice, or at least obsessive listening and a lot of coordination. When it comes to quality air drumming, I submit that Rush fans are the world's finest. Like this guy playing YYZ.Legions of air-drummer talents are...
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Rush released a new album. It's called "Snakes and Arrows". There are 13 songs on it. Those songs contain words. The words are sung to music that's played by men with instruments. There's a bass guitar, an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, and drums. Probably keyboards.Is this review boring you so far? If so, you have an idea of what actually listening to this album would feel like. Is playi...
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So the Rush Snakes And Arrows I like it a lot, but you my not.The End…(The answer my shock you and leave you without a Plasma TV or TV of any kind...!)Rush Armor and Sword Snakes and ArrowsPS I really dig this song it hits a bit of all Rushes Classic Sound...
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Canadian rockers Rush donated $100,000 from the sale of tickets to last weekend's Winnipeg concert for that city's Museum for Human Rights, reports The Winnipeg Free Press.The group also announced today they will be selling museum T-shirts at all of the remaining Canadian stops on their Snakes and Arrows Live concert tour, and donating all of the proceeds from those sales.Rush's contributions w...
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The Guitar Player TV web site has uploaded three clips of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson. The first is a four minute sit-down interview where Alex talks about his favorite Rush songs among other things. In the second video Alex introduces us to all the guitars he's brought on tour, and in the last video Lifeson shows off his stage rig. To check out the footage, goto:http://www.guitarplayertv.com/ ...
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The World's Most Innovative CompaniesThe leaders in nurturing cultures of creativityby Jena McGregor At some point over the past few years you've probably been invited to join your colleagues at some hip off-site locale to brainstorm "out-of-the-box" ideas. You may have been persuaded by creativity consultants to play with Lego blocks to help free your mind or to "ideate" new products. But as s...
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So the Rush Snakes And Arrows I like it a lot, but you my not.The End…(The answer my shock you and leave you without a Plasma TV or TV of any kind...!)Rush Armor and Sword Snakes and ArrowsPS I really dig this song it hits a bit of all Rushes Classic Sound...
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What am I suppose to do? Where are the words that will make you see. What I beleive is true? (RUSH) Hear the song 'Spindrift' by RUSH from their 2007 cd 'SNAKES and ARROWS' at you know.......And now to NFL Week 6. In my 50 -50 games I like INDIANAPOLIS over Baltimore 26 - 20. Ravens aren't gonna win at INDY are they? I also like DALLAS over Arizona 30 -27, but with the Cardinals covering the +5...
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A 52-second audio sample of Rush's new song "Spindrift" was posted on the band's website. The track is taken from ??Snakes & Arrows??(Atlantic), the band's eighteenth studio album due out on May 1."Click Here":CH to give the sample a listen and to see details for Rush's current world tour.In a sign of the times that the CD may soon go the way of the Beta and Laserdisc, ??Snakes & Arrows?? will ...
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Rush released a new album. It's called "Snakes and Arrows". There are 13 songs on it. Those songs contain words. The words are sung to music that's played by men with instruments. There's a bass guitar, an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, and drums. Probably keyboards.Is this review boring you so far? If so, you have an idea of what actually listening to this album would feel like. Is playi...
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I've been listening to the new Rush CD Snakes & Arrows on my Zen and am starting to really like it. Rush stuff always seems to take a few listenings for me before I begin to appreciate it. I wish the MVI would hurry up and come out. I have the MVI on order but since it's delayed had to borrow the CD to rip and tie me over until it shows up. Of course I want to be familiar with the new tunes bef...
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Life's been a bit busy lately. Was busy with the holidays and now I'm serving on the Grand Jury, trying to get furniture for my new apartment, trying to figure out things with my private practice, etc.I did get a chance to see Rush at Madison Square Garden sometime in mid-September and finally getting around to post about it today.Most times when Rush comes around, one of my college roommates, ...
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Rush drummer Neil Peart's web site has been updated with a "drums-only" version of the new track "Main Monkey Business". Just enter the site here and use the embedded player to listen- "CLICK HERE":CH. The song appears on Rush's new album, ??Snakes & Arrows?? (Atlantic), which has sold 160,000 copies in the United States since its May 1 release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.The disc is the fi...
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Some of the early numbers are in for Rush's current world tour, in support of their ??Snakes & Arrows??. For those you interested in the economic viability of the Canadian rock legends, please read on.Rush concert grosses, as reported by Billboard magazine:Artist/Event: RUSHVenue: HiFi Buys AmpthitheatreCity/State: Atlanta, GADate: June 13, 2007Gross Sales: $505,255Attendance: 8,998Capacity: 15...
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Anybody can play air guitar. Really. What's there to it? Hold an imaginary guitar, dance around, rock out, and you're more than halfway there. But air drums? That takes some practice, or at least obsessive listening and a lot of coordination. When it comes to quality air drumming, I submit that Rush fans are the world's finest. Like this guy playing YYZ.Legions of air-drummer talents are...
More >
Rush is the best band i have ever heard in my entire life. Once i started listening to Rush, everything else started to sound like crap. Geddy Lee is my fav musician in the band, probably because he's both the bassist and the lead singer, now how often do you find that. :D
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Far Cry |
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| 2 Armor and Sword |
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| 3 Workin' Them Angels |
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| 4 The Larger Bowl |
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| 5 Spindrift |
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| 6 The Main Monkey Business |
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| 7 The Way the Wind Blows |
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| 8 Hope |
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| 9 Faithless |
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| 10 Bravest Face |
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| 11 Good News First |
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| 12 Malignant Narcissism |
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| 13 We Hold On |
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Click to purchase…
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 "Snakes & Arrows")
