my own reasons<\/a>. That absorbing read led me to this purchase, of the live triple-CD set chronicling the hometown Toronto stop on what would turn out to be the band\u2019s final tour, the relatively brief 35-show R40 tour of summer 2015.<\/p>\nLee maintains that the band was at the pinnacle of its musical powers during said tour, while acknowledging that age was taking its inevitable toll on both of his bandmates, with arthritis, tendinitis and other hard truths of aging making their physically demanding 2.5-hour shows as much an endurance contest as a musical exercise. While R40 Live<\/i> demonstrates a band still playing at an extraordinarily high level, one suspects Peart was wise to insist on walking away afterwards, and not just because of his own desire to end the toll the work was taking on his body. After many years of sustained musical excellence, by 2015 cracks were beginning to show.<\/p>\n
For their R40 tour Rush took the unique and clever approach of sequencing their setlist in reverse chronological order, taking this a step further by initially packing the stage with individual elements of many of the elaborate stage sets the band had employed over previous tours. As the evening progressed, the band working its way backward through time, pieces of set dressing were removed era by era until the final encores returned the band to their original state: three guys with guitar, bass and drums playing on a bare stage, Lee\u2019s lone bass amp propped precariously on a pair of institutional chairs like those found in the public school gyms that housed the band\u2019s earliest performances.<\/p>\n
The show opens with a quartet of songs from 2012\u2019s Clockwork Angels<\/i> and 2007\u2019s Snakes & Arrows<\/i> that illustrate both the strengths and the weaknesses of those latter-day albums. Do they make a big noise? You betcha! Are there riffs and choruses? Here and there. But mostly there\u2019s just a series of amped-up jams that never go anywhere particularly memorable, framed within a muddy mix that makes it hard to pick out individual performances. <\/p>\n
The fact that Snakes<\/i> instrumental \u201cThe Main Monkey Business\u201d is the early highlight also points to an issue I had not anticipated. I\u2019ve been entertained by Lee\u2019s anything-but-ordinary voice for decades, from the wailing-banshee days of Fly By Night<\/i> to his more melodious and nuanced work in the \u201980s and \u201990s. On R40<\/i>, it\u2019s apparent that Lee\u2019s vocal range has been significantly diminished by age, with the result that he sometimes struggles to hit notes, sometimes dodges them entirely, and occasionally falls far off pitch.<\/p>\n
That said, Lee, Lifeson and Peart battle Father Time like the warriors they are, with the group\u2019s home crowd eating up every minute of it. It\u2019s a treat to hear the rarely-played \u201cHow It Is,\u201d and they power through \u201cAnimate,\u201d but the next real highlight for me was \u201cRoll The Bones,\u201d the underappreciated title track of its underappreciated 1991 album. And then they make the bold move of jumping back seven years and three largely forgettable late-\u201980s albums to the closing track from 1984\u2019s Grace Under Pressure<\/i>, the pulsing, shape-shifting \u201cBetween The Wheels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having arrived at the consensus heart of the Rush catalog\u2014a consensus of which I am a member\u2014the boys deliver another surprise, the live debut of Signals<\/i>\u2019 \u201cLosing It,\u201d featuring special guest and longtime friend of the band Ben Mink on electric violin; it\u2019s an emphatic performance that elevates the song. First set closer \u201cSubdivisions\u201d follows with a powerful rendition of one of the strongest numbers the band ever recorded.<\/p>\n
The second set opens with a pair of the group\u2019s best-known tracks from their high-water mark album Moving Pictures<\/i> (1981). \u201cTom Sawyer\u201d has the unfortunate distinction of pairing powerhouse instrumental performances with one of Lee\u2019s more problematic vocal efforts. The good news is that they follow this by absolutely nailing the superb instrumental \u201cYYZ,\u201d named for Toronto\u2019s airport code.<\/p>\n
Permanent Waves<\/i> (1980) is well-represented with a twisting, turning, ebullient \u201cThe Spirit Of Radio\u201d followed by enthusiastic performances of a pair of relatively deep cuts in \u201cNatural Science\u201d and \u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder.\u201d A clever mashup pairs the introductory segment of \u201cCygnus X-1 Part II\u201d from Hemispheres<\/i> with its counterpart from predecessor \u201cCygnus X-1,\u201d with the latter interrupted by a high-spirited four-minute drum solo (gulp) from Peart. This bit of over-the-top prog-ness is followed by lighter-snapping ballad \u201cCloser To The Heart\u201d and a lively rendition of early nugget \u201cXanadu.\u201d<\/p>\n
The familiar abridged 12-minute version of the band\u2019s first great epic, the dystopian fantasy-themed 20-minute prog opus \u201c2112,\u201d makes for a superb regular set closer, performed with energy and flair, with Lifeson in particular demonstrating his lasting enthusiasm for its heaviness and dynamics. The encores take the band all the way back to the beginning, pairing first \u201cLakeside Park\u201d (from Caress of Steel<\/i>) with \u201cAnthem\u201d (from Fly By Night<\/i>), and then \u201cWhat You\u2019re Doing\u201d with \u201cWorking Man\u201d both taken from the group\u2019s first, self-titled (and only Peart-less) album. The encores find Lee doing battle at the mic again, straining to hit a 21-year-old\u2019s notes with a 61-year-old\u2019s vocal cords.<\/p>\n
This triple-CD set includes six bonus tracks that were not played in Toronto, but made their way into the setlist at various points on the R40 tour\u2014including punchy takes on \u201cOne Little Victory,\u201d \u201cDistant Early Warning,\u201d and \u201cRed Barchetta,\u201d plus evocative mini-epic \u201cThe Camera Eye.\u201d This allows R40 Live<\/i> to offer both a snapshot of a single evening and a comprehensive chronicle of the band\u2019s final tour. <\/p>\n
Overall, R40<\/i> Live<\/i> showcases a band that, while still capable of exceptional musicianship, was beginning to show inevitable signs of wear and tear. Lee\u2019s reluctance ahead of time to call this the group\u2019s final tour is understandable\u2014quitting while you\u2019re still on top is both counter-intuitive and a notoriously difficult target to hit\u2014but the wisdom of Peart\u2019s decision to walk away after this tour feels apparent at the margins of this otherwise very strong album, which effectively captures both the musical and chronological span of Rush\u2019s remarkable career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5697],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-46882","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-rush","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46882"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46882"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}