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Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Mon, Dec 23, 2024

Clockwork Angels review from music journalist Martin Popoff

Thu, May 24, 2012@12:55PM | comments removed/disabled

UPDATE - 5/24@1:08PM: Actually... reader Snaked points out that he did give a rating. 10 out of 10 - can't get much better than that:

... Revered BraveWords.com Editor In Chief Martin Popoff has heard the album and provides (as usual) an in-depth, step-by-step, track-by-track synopsis of the magnum opus we are all just dying to wrap our ears around! Check out his massive glowing 10/10 review below...

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Canadian-born music journalist and critic Martin Popoff - author of the 2004 Rush bio Contents Under Pressure - has written an extensive review of Clockwork Angels which was posted over at BW&BK earlier today. Here's a small taste of his review:

... A singular Rush triumph results, and yes, before we even get to the music, there really is so much to ponder here, as there's lyrics, light narration, visuals, and then an exo-story by Kevin J. Anderson. And like the best concept albums, the lyrics alone are mostly abstraction, with further abstraction caused by demarcation into their necessary chapters, welcome, so that these hugely ambitious and exclusively dark songs can stand on their own as Rush songs, soon to be mouthed by crowds in the wrongness for this of hockey barns.

But the concept nature is not the least of why this feels like the most unified and purposeful Rush album since Vapor Trails and before that, Signals and its pastels - it's the baffling music, an almost new invention, or new is old, or "the future as it's meant to be" in steampunk parlance. Gone is Alex's trinket of layering in acoustic to accompany the riff (I always thought this sounded like a tear in the woofer), and also gone, then, logically, is any of the tinkle in Rush production, the brightness, which started with Grace and then reared its head to varying degrees and with often enrageable persona throughout, on every album, save I suppose for Vapor Trails. ...

Popoff then goes on to critique most of the album's tracks individually. The review is very positive overall but no rating was given. You can read the entire thing at this link. There was also this short review from UK website Uber Rock earlier in the week which you can check out here. Thanks to snowdog2113 for the heads up.