LogFAQs > #933617416

Panthera posted...

Fly By Night, meet Bump By Afternoon

yeah, sorry, haven't (and won't) be able to sustain the 1/day pace since I'm writing more than 4x as much about each album as I planned to when I decided to do this lmao

Bartzyx posted...

"Best I Can" is the best song on that album

For once, I'm having trouble seeing this one! Like, I think it's good (And probably my #3 or 4 on the album depending on how I feel about it compared to By-Tor at any given moment), for sure. But it feels a lot like a middle ground between Anthem and Fly By Night imo and I'm just not seeing what it does better than those two \_()_/

13. Hold Your Fire
Excellent: Lyrics and themes
Awful: Consistency, Low Points

I have such mixed feelings on this album. Mostly, the quality of the songs on the album itself is so mixed. About a third of the album is fucking brilliant, another third is good but not standout, and the last third is really just bad, especially by Rush standards. In that regard, it's basically a massively superior Test For Echo, which suffered the exact same problem, but its highs weren't nearly as high, and even its middle ground wasn't nearly as good. But if you do force your way through the bad here, you're rewarded with some of Rush's absolute best songs, as well as a very cohesive album - in terms of both style and theme.

I'll start with the bad here, and get it out of the way - Tai Shan is notoriously bad (Though I'm sure it has its fans...), and I don't think it needs any introduction or discussion on that. High Water is just thoroughly dull on every front. There's nothing compelling about any of the lyrics or instrumentation there and I'm just left with feelings of "why did I spend my time listening to this instead of literally anything else". (Best way to enjoy this album: Turn It Off after Turn The Page) Meanwhile, by contrast, Lock And Key has a very clear direction and a very clear (if overly explored) theme. But it's a very repetitive song that feels to me like it drags on excessively long, even if it's only five minutes long. And the solo section, while as technically solid as ever from Lifeson, feels disjointed at best. The song just manages to be a lot less than the sum of its parts, which is impressively bad in music. I'll also take this chance to talk about Second Nature, which I don't have quite as low an opinion of as the other three songs I mentioned here - I actually think it's generally pretty solid. Good instrumentation, and I feel like the lyrics really hit the mark. But at the same time, I find it really jarring to listen to, sort of like the lyrics were just laid over the rest of the song without any regard for rhythm or flow. It bothers me, and I can't like the song as much as I want to because of that.

On the good side though, Time Stand Still, Force Ten, and Mission are all among the absolute top tier of things Rush has ever done. Mission, in particular, easily stands out as top three among every song Rush has written in my book. The concept of idolizing other people/their lifestyles and the pitfalls therein is a concept that hits very close to home for me, especially having seen a few examples of people close to me where either everything was built on lies to begin with or there was something making it unsustainable and everything came crashing down around them. I lost a good friend because of that when I was a kid, which leads the song to resonate with me very strongly. The last half of the song (Basically the last verse and the instrumental sections surrounding it) are absolutely just peak music in general, let alone Rush. I'll try to be brief with Force Ten and Time Stand Still, since they're the famous tracks on this album, but suffice to say that I find both tracks very easy to listen to, with Force Ten being exciting and fun and Time Stand Still being a very atmospheric piece and lyrics discussing a theme that resonates with me more every year of my life. Even if my introduction to the song was back in my early high school days, where I didn't feel the same way about it as I do now.

The remaining three songs also exist, and are also 'pretty good'. In particular, I want to like Open Secrets more than I do. I think it's a really fun track that does some cool things, but I listen to it and I'm left wanting more. I think it hits the lonely feeling really well in both the lyrics and the music, which is objectively a good thing, but it means the song misses a bit with me where it probably shouldn't. Prime Mover and Turn The Page, meanwhile, are just all-around very solid, which basically means they're the ones that get left out here. I have basically nothing negative to say about either, but they don't shine as brightly either.