It is pure
Snakes & Arrows.
This album has been a real challenge for me, as a card carrying member of the Rush fan for life club, I found it difficult to assess my feelings about the album. Rush has for many albums doing some experimenting with many different sounds and techniques that, well, pushed any devoted Rush fan into one of two groups. One of the groups consisted of fans that liked the newer (post Moving Pictures) albums, the other group consisted of fans that did not. I sympathized with both groups, but stood fast as a fan of all of their music. I always viewed Rush as a group that did not need to be popular, but keeping pace with music. When the synthesizers came in the early 80’s, there was Geddy keying them up. Electronic drums came, Neil picked himself up a nice set, you get the idea. I feel that this is why Snakes and Arrows presented me with such a problem, I expected something new, in fact that is exactly what I got.
When I first listened to the album all I could say is that I did not care for ‘Workin’ them Angels‘. Listened to it one more time with essentially the same results. So, I put it down for what turned out to be about 3 days. I was in the car and something told me to take the CD with me (yes it was already loaded in the iPod, but…). I listened to Far Cry, I remember thinking to myself “is this the same song I listened to earlier?”. Every song I listened to after that was the same question.
What had happened?
W ho cares… I loved it, absolutely loved it.
Fast forward about a month, it was after the great concert at Blossom, I was talking with a Rush fan that had not been able to partake in the new album. He was telling me about his brother that had the album and was relating the same story, about initially questioning the album, putting it down, and listening to it again.
His brother put it best: “It is Pure!”.
Finally it makes sense, that’s it! Holy Smokes! I thought about the concert, through the set when they played the tracks from Snakes & Arrows. They were jamming and Jamming like there was no tomorrow. No synths, just a bit of peddle powered effects. They are back to their roots. yeah baby
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