LogFAQs > #933894511

Metal_DK posted...

moving pictures 1

Hell no

9. Moving Pictures

Sorry, but this album isn't the GOAT, and I actually find it wildly overrated by the multiple people I know who think it is. It's certainly Rush's most radio-friendly album, and has several of their most popular songs. Such as the less-than-stellar Tom Sawyer. Like, honestly, song's fine. But even though I know this is wrong of me, I can't bring myself to really like it simply on account of the sheer amount of undeserved love it gets. Like, this is Rush's most popular song? Really? In what universe does that actually make sense?

Instead of ranting about that though, this album is still pretty damn good. The rest of the first half shines super brightly as some of Rush's better material. Red Barchetta in particular is the song on the album that actually deserves something close to the level of praise Tom Sawyer gets, Limelight is also very high quality with a particularly standout guitar solo, and YYZ is just a pure demonstration of instrumental quality and (As I previously said) is the best instrumental piece the band did in my opinion. Super catchy and memorable, a very high level of technical skill on display, and doesn't drag on too long or overstay its welcome. Pretty ideal in a lot of ways.

Then there's the back half of the album, which is a lot less radio-friendly (and thus less popular) than the front, but still quite good. The Camera Eye is the last of Rush's long, multipart tracks, though it's usually not grouped with the rest on account of basically just having two halves instead of an actual series of parts or a story, instead just playing some cool riffs while contrasting the more modern, younger New York to the rich history of London, though honestly it looks more like highlighting the hustle and bustle common to all major cities rather than drawing differences between the two cities mentioned by name. I dunno though, I'm not a critic. Vital Signs actually was released as a single, but never caught on for whatever reason. Shame, because it's really solid. But it's also not really the same style as the rest of the band's material to that point, let alone the album itself, which is basically the only explanation I've got for that. The last track to discuss here is about the worst kind of person/event. The lynch mobs Witch Hunt so clearly describes show up throughout history. Religion, xenophobia, whatever else. The "immigrants and infidels", as Peart so clearly put it. Regardless, fuck the internet for making said mobs so much easier to assemble and over much sillier things, even if they're less explicitly violent.

Also, fun fact. This was my second Rush album, and I picked it above a lot of the others I may have been more interested in from the songs I already knew because I knew it was the most popular one. Since I haven't mentioned that in a while, my progression was (off the top of my head, may be mixed up on the middle stuff) Permanent Waves -> Moving Pictures -> Grace Under Pressure/Fly By Night -> 2112/Rush/Hemispheres -> A Farewell To Kings/Hold Your Fire/Signals -> Roll The Bones/Presto/Counterparts -> Power Windows/Snakes And Arrows/Caress of Steel -> Test For Echo/Vapor Trails -> Clockwork Angels (Which was released about 18 months after I first listened to Test For Echo and Vapor Trails, just to give a timeline on how long it took me to get through the existing discography). Just looking at which of these albums have and have not shown up in the bottom half of this list, I think it's pretty clear that there's not much of a bias between how early/late I was introduced to something and how much I like it, relatively speaking.