The new layout = awesome.

Oh Thom - about the Rush comments you made on the last post. What album is that? Am I hallucinating or missing a joke?

Duh.

Okay, I reevaluated GUP and bumped it up a few spots, so that lets Test For Echo fall into my #15 position for most of the reasons you listed. It does drag, and could contain the worst lyrics on any album as a whole. Virtuality, The Color Of Right (which is apparently some Canadian law thing, I don’t know, I fell asleep while someone was trying to explain it to me), Half The World… blech. If Dog Years is Neil’s attempt at a sense of humor then I’ll give him a pass, but it still kinda sucks. I really only listen to Driven, Totem and Resist off this album, and Virtuality is occasionally entertaining if you’re drinking and you want to laugh.

So:
17 – Roll The Bones
16 - Rush
15 – Test For Echo

14 – Caress Of Steel
I simply think that I am not nerdy enough for this album. I’ve always said that I’m a bad prog fan, and this just doesn’t have enough oomph for me as an album. The epics are… well, I think they suffer from the same problem as Vapor Trails. Halfway through Fountain I’m looking for the fast forward button and putting that back to back with The Necromancer just kills it. It doesn’t connect for me on any level and they haven’t realized that editing is their friend yet.

That being said, the drumming on Lakeside Park is lovely and simple and just perfect, and I would pay extra to see Ged sing I Think I’m Going Bald now, since ironically, he’s the only one who isn’t. There isn’t a single standout track, and that’s why I can’t put it any higher. It’s good and I wouldn’t call any of these the bottom of Rush’s catalog, but nothing is great. Every song falls squarely in the middle and while it shows potential, I think the songs were letdowns from the best parts of Fly By Night.

13 – Fly By Night
Anthem, Beneath, Between & Behind, and By-Tor save this album. All great songs, and they are a good indicator of what’s to come. If they’d taken the worse material off this, and cut down the longer tracks on Caress of Steel, it would be a fantastic album. I’ve always felt that Rush sometimes sacrificed quality for quantity and it’s easiest to see on their first few albums, when they were cranking them out every 9 months. Once again, I am not nerdy enough to fully appreciate Rivendell.

12 – Grace Under Pressure
Okay, here’s a better place for it. Some amazing songs – Between The Wheels, Afterimage, The Enemy Within, one great song that I find to be an incredibly difficult listen – Red Sector A, some meh, and a song that is clearly in the top 5 worst Rush songs – The Body Electric. Look, I have a degree in Computer Engineering and even I find the binary filled chorus lame. It physically hurts. It’s up there with In The Mood, Face Up, Virtuality and Superconductor as the songs that make me embarassed for them. They also make me want to smash the albums to bits, so that’s probably a bad sign.

Other than GUP, my least favorites have tended to come from both ends of their career.