Rush

A Farewell To Kings

A Good Album

Review Score:

(6/10)
Rush's fifth album. This album shows Rush's maturity in songwriting and performing. Continuing in the tradition of their previous album, 2112, this album is the first real attempt at creating progressive rock, as it was known in the early to mid seventies.

The longer songs are more often and the music and lyrics are more complex, if not political at times.

The title track is flawless and the message in the lyrics is timeless.

"Xanadu" is also an excellent long-form piece of work based on the Samuel Taylor Coleredge poem "Kubla Khan". This song shows the band mastering their ability to plan odd time signatures at lightening speed.

Lyrically "Closer To The Heart" is profound, but the music has not aged gracefully with this one. Luckily, however, this tune is on most Rush live albums where it's been given more muscle.

However, "Madrigal" and "Cygnus X-1" begin to drag the album down. "Madrigal" is pointless and "Cygnus X-1" lacks the competance that the tile track and "Xanadu" had.

Lyrically "Cygnus X-1" is too metaphoric, unlike the title track or Closr To The Heart where Peart waxed political and made you think about the world in more literal terms. Musically it does have some great chops, but the overall science-fiction theme swamps it.

Unfortunately this theme is continued for all of the first half of the following album "Hemispheres", though it fares better there than here.

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