Rush

A Farewell To Kings

After becoming the epitome of prog, Rush steps back a little

Review Score:

(10/10)
Rush has always been a band of albums and not hit singles, so when they became the next big thing in progressive rock with 2112, it was due to the album as a whole (particularly the title suite) not just one solitary song. But I guess Rush must have been a bit worn out from the extravagant "2112" for the follow-up A FAREWELL TO KINGS has them scaling things back a little bit, and not a moment too soon. Because honestly, can someone get more pretentious (I mean good pretentious, not bad) than "2112"? Just about every song on here is worth noting, even if two of them haven't gone on to become major classics like the other four on here. The title track has them again condensing their prog aspirations into a finely-crafted, well-written 5-minute song, and succeeding admirably. Granted, the subject of royalty vs. peasantry is the stuff worthy of a miniseries, but Rush says all that needs to be said, thank Heavens. At the end of "Kings", there's a mention of "Closer To The Heart", a short little 3-minute song that apparently may have been intended as a filler, but instead has gone on to become one of Rush's most popular songs, appearing on all four of the band's live albums. It worked for Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", so there's no reason why it shouldn't with Rush. Geddy Lee has thankfully done more bass-playing than songwriting, but sometimes he can come up with something worthy of Neil Peart, and he does on FAREWELL with "Cinderella Man". Apparently a big movie buff, Lee sets the classic Frank Capra film MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN to music quite successfully, and had it been written back in the 1930s, chances are the song would have found its way into the movie. Excellent work right there, and too bad it remains one of Rush's most unsung works. In the way of epics, they repeate CARESS OF STEEL's method of including two, but while that album took prog rock's tendency for bombast to the nth degree, FAREWELL contains some more modest works like "Xanadu" and "Cygnus X-1". Both of those songs became concert favorites, and work just as well as "2112" did, and in half the time, too. While A FAREWELL TO KINGS wasn't as cinematic as 2112, it showed that Rush could do both large and small works with ease.

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