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Over a year and a half after the success of
Moving Pictures, RUSH
released Signals, a good and surprisingly underrated album.
Subdivisions opens up this record with the standard synthesizers
RUSH was using. While a great song, the mix isn’t that great. The
outstanding blend of percussion, bass, guitar, synth, and vocals seems a
bit cluttered now. This record puts RUSH in the middle of their
second phase, the 1980’s.
The Analog Kid
is a platform for Alex and Geddy to see if they can keep up with each
other’s speedy riffs until…enter the synthesizer. It almost seems that the
keyboards mellowed RUSH out a bit. Chemistry, Digital Man,
and The Weapon are more of the same sound and are good songs.
New World Man
is another extremely popular songs, is a contender with Subdivisions
for best off this record. New World Man makes use of some different
synthesizer sounds giving it a different beat and feel than the others.
Geddy’s bass line is one of his most memorable as well.
Losing It
is not the best song ever, nor the most popular, but it is an unexpectedly
good song. Heavy on the synth, and much more mellow than most RUSH
songs, it’s quite relaxing. From a composition standpoint, it is a very
complex song with many layers. Countdown closes up the record, with
an extremely similar synth line to Subdivisons. By this time Signals
has become frighteningly tedious.
Signals
is weak. It has some good songs on it, and some extremely memorable riffs
and sections, even some entire songs. Unfortunately most of the album
blends together, merging songs into an indistinguishable whole. Nothing
remarkable sticks out. Perhaps it’s because everybody got a hair cut for
this album? |
