In terms of scoring each song, I tried to listen to them as individual songs, as well as the placement in the album. I will not include notes on each song, but I will give the 1 to 10 score rating each song on the album got. The raw score is important, because sometimes short albums will skew high in the ratings - it is easier to rate high on an album with only 4 songs, compared to an album with 11 songs. I toyed with the idea of actually breaking up the long songs (2112, Hemispheres) and rating the component sub-pieces, but this doesn't fit for me - they wrote them as an individual song, so I should rate them as such.
As a reminder, here is my grade scale:
- 90-100% A
- 85-89 A-
- 80-84 B+
- 75-79 B
- 70-74 B-
- 65-69 C+
- 60-64 C
- 50-59 C-
- 0-49 F
Note that there are no "D"s - either I liked the song enough for it to pass, or it failed - a failure is a song I just don't want to listen to again. Obviously, the scale is totally subjective, but I am looking for how the song feels musically constructed, how interesting it is to me, how much emotional response I have to the song, and how much I would like to listen to the song again. Anything in the A or A- range would be something perfect or near perfect, that I could listen to over and over again. B songs still have a similar impact, but I might need to be in the right mood - "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" for example has good energy and is interesting, but a little long for my tastes, whereas "The Weapon" is a great song, but a bit depressing, and if I am not in the right mood, I won't want to listen to it as much. Nonetheless, I would never skip past a B graded song (+ or - included) if I was listening to an album. A C rated song kind of missed the mark. It still works, is a decent song, but may be misplaced on an album, be too trite for what I like, and I may consider skipping it if listening to an album - this would still be a rare occurrence, as I would still like the song well enough to listen to it, just not enough to go out of my way to find it.
An F is a song that I would skip. End of story, no questions, just don't like it - the varying scores from 0 to 4.5 rate the relative severity of the fail... a zero has nothing I like at all, while a 4.5 is decent through most of it but has something that just rubs me the wrong way. I cannot think of any Rush songs that would fit in this category - that is why they are one of (if not my) favorite bands.
So here goes nothing:
2112
- Raw Score: 50.5 out of 60
- Percentage: 84.17%
- Grade: B+
- Track 1: 2112 - Rating: 10
- Track 2: Passage to Bangkok - Rating: 7; Good song, but doesn't really fit after a song as epic as 2112. Even if you had to flip over the album, a much clearer transition, this song is too trite for Rush lyrically, maybe it fits on an earlier album, but not here.
- Track 3: Twilight Zone - Rating: 7.5; just slightly to long for what it is, but an interesting attempt.
- Track 4: Lessons - Rating: 10
- Track 5: Tears - Rating: 6.5; Decent song, but it is misplaced on the album - it could have fit better as the last song, I think.
- Track 6: Something for Nothing - Rating: 9.5; Near perfect song, this is why Tears could not be the last song... the only thing that hurts it is that the intro is slightly too long for my taste, and the technique of fading out a song is something I generally do not like. The fadeout here still works, however, because it is not just the same riff repeated at the end, but is intricate enough to want to keep listening as it fades.
- OVERALL: With two 10s and a 9.5, this is an album with great songs, including a great epic song in 2112. A few hit and miss songs take this album into the B+ range (just barely), but that would have been my impression without scoring the album.
Power Windows
- Raw Score: 70.5 out of 80
- Percentage: 88.125%
- Grade: A-
- Track 1: The Big Money - Rating: 10; A perfect opening song; great keyboard, guitar, and bass.
- Track 2: Grand Designs - Rating: 10; Great riff, fantastic lyrics, good transitions, great finish to the song.
- Track 3: Manhattan Project - Rating: 9
- Track 4: Marathon - Rating: 9; great bass-lines, good supporting guitar work, great transitions within the song.
Track 5: Territories - Rating: 7.5; Decent song, but a bit too moody for my taste all the time - that is all that keeps it from an A- is the emotional tone... the song itself is very solid. - Track 6: Middletown Dreams - Rating: 7.5
- Track 7: Emotion Detector - Rating: 8.5
- Track 8: Mystic Rhythms - Rating: 9
- OVERALL: A really, really good album, bordering on a great album (A, not A-). Starts of strong, near perfect, but dips a little in the latter half and comes back with two really good songs to end - this is a great progressive rock step for Rush, though I know a lot of "hardcore" Rush fans swear by the seventies and early eighties Rush, but for my money, they really hit stride in the eighties with the Prog Rock sound, while the seventies had a great hard rock/early metal sound. It is like comparing Alien to Aliens in quality - they are both great movies, but too different to compare to one another.
Presto
- Raw Score: 102 out of 110
- Percentage: 92.73%
- Grade: A
- Track 1: Show Don't Tell - Rating: 10
- Track 2: Chain Lightning - Rating: 10
- Track 3: The Pass - Rating: 10; One of the best Rush songs ever. Literally. If it is not my favorite, it is in the top 2 (with Cold Fire). If I had a rating higher than 10, I would give it. In fact this song does go to 11.
- Track 4: War Paint - Rating: 10
- Track 5: Scars - Rating: 8.5; The first "dip-down" on the album, the song is slightly less than perfect, but still phenomenal nonetheless.
- Track 6: Presto - Rating: 9.5; Again, near perfect, but can't quite hold up to the first 4 tracks. The fadeout at the end isn't too bad, but takes a bit away from the song. Again it is interesting enough as it fades to want to keep listening, it isn't just the same riff repeated at the end - the worst way to end any rock song. Rush never does that.
- Track 7: Superconductor - Rating: 10; WOW!!!, just when the album seems like it can't attain the perfection of the first 4 tracks, it does, and it is like starting a whole new album.
- Track 8: Anagram (for Mongo) - Rating: 8.5
- Track 9: Red Tide - Rating: 8
- Track 10: Hand over Fist - Rating: 9
- Track 11: The Wind Can Carry - Rating: 8.5
- OVERALL: WOW!!! This is a freakin' great album. I have always thought that, but after reviewing this, I just put the album on again and listened to it in its entirety. 5 songs with a rating of 10, only one that dips into the B+ range, this is a must in any collection. It also has one of my "11" rated special songs that would give it a revised raw score of 103, percentage of 93.63%, but I don't know if I should actually change my score...
Fly By Night
- Raw Score: 66 out of 80
- Percentage: 82.5%
- Grade: B+
- Track 1: Anthem - Rating: 9; Good opening song, lyrically meaningful (based on Ayn Rand's only good novel, Anthem - where allegory is used appropriately and there are no ridiculously didactic diatribes)
- Track 2: Best I Can - Rating: 10
- Track 3: Beneath, Between and Behind - Rating: 9
- Track 4: By-Tor and the Snow Dog - Rating: 7; solid rock'n'roll, with a little D & D flair, it just goes on a bit too long for what it is.
- Track 5: Fly By Night - Rating: 10; might be the best song on the album - good choice for title track.
- Track 6: Making Memories - Rating: 7; fairly standard rock song, but just doesn't meet up to my standards for a Rush song. I know that they were young when they wrote it, and writing a song about touring was probably fun, but it just is not an A song.
- Track 7: Rivendell - Rating: 5; this is probably my least favorite Rush song (barring maybe I Think I'm Going Bald, though that song bothers me less than it used to - I wonder why?). It isn't bad, it just isn't that good either. It isn't that it is slow or acoustic, it just isn't interesting. It still is a passable song, but just barely.
- Track 8: In the End - Rating: 9
- Overall: A very solid album, very good followup effort to their first album, a great debut for Neil Peart's writing skills, just a few less than perfect songs mar the overall album, but still very listenable.
Subdivisions
- Raw Score: 75 out of 80
- Percentage: 93.75%
- Grade: A
- Track 1: Subdivisions - Rating: 9.5; my only complaint is that the guitar could play a more prominent roll.
- Track 2: Analog Kid - Rating: 10
- Track 3: Chemistry - Rating: 10
- Track 4: Digital Man - Rating: 10; how can you go wrong with the contrast between this and Analog Kid. Just as the metal/hard rock sound for Rush transitions to a prog rock sound, this is the perfect picture of their growth as a band.
- Track 5: The Weapon - Rating: 8; good, just not as great as the rest of the album.
- Track 6: New World Man - Rating: 10
- Track 7: Losing It - Rating: 9; one of their best songs in terms of evoking a mood, its only fault being that it is too good at evoking in me the sense of despair, desolation, and desperation. I can't help but being near tears every time I hear it or even when I think about it in retrospect.
- Track 8: Count Down - Rating: 8.5, this is a great counterpoint to the previous song, but I think, for me it suffers from the mood the previous song evokes in me, but still a good capper to the album.
- Overall: A great album, again, this is a requirement in anyone's collection who is a fan of good music. I remember in high school, in the back of Guitar Magazine, everyone who was trying to get a band together seemed to list "Pre-Signals Rush" as an influence. They were are and shall always be idiotic, because Signals is a great achievement! I give half the songs 10s (4 of 'em) and only one dipped into the B+ range, but just barely - Even though this got a higher overall score than Presto (by 1.02 percentage points, or only .12 percentage points if you count The Pass as an 11) it is hard for me to say it's better than Presto (which has more 10s and is a longer album, so more chances to go awry), it is at least as good, which makes it pretty damned fantastic.
There you go, have fun with it, for what it's worth.
2 comments:
Interesting picks Prof. I'd put Hemispheres and Moving Pictures in there somewhere and Counterparts as well. La Villa Strangiato is an awesome instrumental.
I'm going to be rating all of the Rush albums, I just randomly selected the first five that I reviewed. I would definitely include those albums as great - in fact, I think Counterparts will rate higher than any other album, but I am going in strictly random order to try and fet rid of any personal desire I might have to listen to the album.
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