LogFAQs > #933757914

11. Roll The Bones

This album has already come up as one certain readers may be surprised to have not seen yet. It fails to crack the top ten or top half, but ultimately I am super fond of this album in ways other Rush fans may not be. Even with a lot of lyrics that wouldn't generally suggest it, I find this album very, very relaxing to listen to, even when the guitars and harder styles come into play. And contrast an album like Hold Your Fire that takes a good chunk of bad in with the great, this album takes the very-slightly-less great in with the pretty good across the board.

Like, let's take the worst songs on this album. For my money, those are the more silly style and fast-moving You Bet Your Life and Face Up. Frankly, I consider both songs pretty vapid lyrically, especially considered to a lot of other things Peart wrote, and not the strongest musically. But for the worst tracks on an album, you can do far worse than having fun little cheesy listens. And I actually, unironically, really love the "I'm in a groove now / or is it a rut / I need some feedback / but all the lines are cut / I get so angry, I keep my mouth shut" verse in Face Up. It feels good to listen to that one. And in the same vein, Roll The Bones is a very fun (And better than the previous two) track that's marred by Geddy deciding that expiermenting with rap was fun and smart. Seriously, that segment is dumb. But the rest of that track is very good.

And then on top of that, this album actually has good songs too. I know, Rush writing good songs, who knew? But I do consider Dreamline and Bravado to both be utterly brilliant pieces (Even if not quite as much so as, say, Mission), and both Heresy and Ghost of a Chance are pretty great as well. It's a set of emotional tracks, ranging from themes like loss or love to the literal end of the Cold War and the Eastern European aftermath (Reminder: I am a sucker for the historical tales). This album has a relative middle ground as well, but when it's got solid peaks and the aforementioned valleys are as fun as they are, suffice to say they're good. Where's My Thing? in particular is a catchy little instrumental number that stands out as being pretty decent even among Rush's instrumental tracks (Which do a great job of putting a lot of the band's raw talent on display)