Monday, March 12, 2007

New Rush Song Posted at Rush.com

As of this morning, you can hear a streaming version of Rush's new single "Far Cry" at the band's official Web site, which has been reformatted to promote the new Snakes and Arrows CD due out on May 1. Also check out the cool studio photos in the 'gallery' section. What do I think of the song? I am not sure yet. Catchy chorus, not so catchy verse. Some very cool musical interludes. Great drumming (shock). Killer intro but maybe a bit forced. Great, groovy, heavy intro riff! But you know, I am still waiting in vain for them to re-write "Red Barchetta." Anyway I have only heard it once. Tell me what YOU think.

2 comments:

Dr. John said...

Sounds like a lot of the more recent stuff with a chord from the 1970's thrown in. Some of the "singles" from there more recent albums ("Test for Echo", "Roll the Bones") have not been as good as some of the other material so I will wait to see what happens on the 1st of May.

As far as recreating Red Barchetta, nothing will ever come close to that or the "Moving Pictures" album. For a good cover of it, though, check out the album called "Working Man" which is a Rush tribute that is pretty well done, for the most part (except for "Hold Your Fire" by Eric Martin).

VoxMoose said...

When Vapor Trails came out in 2002 (a GREAT freakin' album by the way), I was thinking the same thing you are saying right now, Dr. John. But then I realized that I was just temporally miscalibrated by referring to albums like "Test for Echo" and, in particular, "Roll the Bones", as the "new Rush albums" (although, much to my chagrin, I still think of them that way)!

Just think about it. Test for Echo is 11 years old this year! Imagine while we were in high school circa 1985, some old foggies referring to the "new" Zeppelin or Floyd album that came out in 1974! And Roll the Bones is now 16 years old! That would be like talking in the quad circa 1984 about Cream's "new album" Wheels of Fire...

Nevertheless, I essentially agree with you. For me, the Permanent Waves through Grace Under Pressure era (peaking with Moving Pictures) is so subtle and powerful both poetically and musically, I'm frequently revisiting it for inspiration to this day. The stuff before that has some amazing hard and art rock impact but the stuff after that (until Vapor Trails) has only a few highlights. However, Vapor Trails nearly recaptured the peak era for me.

The jury is still out for Far Cry. But I see potential...

I'll have to check out the "Working Man" tribute. There is another tribute album called "Subdivisions: A tribute to the music of Rush" that I cannot recommend. I wanted to like it, but it is just plain odd. There are some highlights, but it comes down to a bunch of 80s hair-metal bands circa 2004 doing Rush covers (talk about a trip to the Twilight Zone). Their heart is in the right place, but it is just plain weird at times.