Review:

on 2011-06-22 CharlesMartel Said:

With "A Farewell to Kings" and the follow up "Hemispheres", Rush reached the peak of their musical ability. Of the two, this is the better album and is their best album of all without a doubt in my opinion. When this came out it seemed, at the time, as if Rush could really go no higher. Looking back after all those years, it seems as if I was right. They never did get any better than this. This was all the more surprising for Rush were not only the only band outside of Europe who made it big in prog rock, but they also joined the party as guests were leaving. Most of the acts of the early seventies had disappeared so far up their own arses they were unrecognisable, and the shrill voice of punk was always quick to ridicule acts such as Rush. Yes, it was a surprise that they made it, let alone felt capable of releasing an album such as this in 1977.

Long gone was the dense, blue-collar heavy metal sound of the first album. Under the obvious direction of Neal Peart, they had taken their propensity for epic music, refined it and brought it to a culmination here. "A Farewell to Kings", "Cygnus X-1" and "Xanadu" are rightly cited as being classics of their era. Of the three, my favourite is "Xanadu", loosely based on the Coleridge poem of the same name. "Cygnus X-1" began the story which came to a conclusion on "Hemispheres" though I will always maintain that, at the time the band wrote it, they still had no idea where it was going to take them. All three songs are multi-textured guitar and synthesiser classics and show off the band's ability as musicians, able to blend complex rhythms and harmonies to great effect. There was no questioning it, Rush were one of the most technically accomplished musicians of their generation.

But one should not overlook the shorter and frequently slower tracks as well. "Madrigal" is a good piece of acoustic guitar work. "Closer to the Heart" is, not surprisingly, the single taken off the album and is about as close to commercial as Rush were going to get at this stage. But if you want to see where some of their later stuff originated, you should perhaps check this out. And then there was the much-maligned "Cinderella Man", a track which even to this day generates ridiculous amounts of hatred. It may not be their best, but it is not so awful that some I know have written off the whole album on the strength of it.

The downside, and there almost always is one, is that Rush still had not shaken off some of the issues which had dogged their earlier work. Geddy Lee's vocals were still not up to the task. And Alex Lifeson was now stretching his guitar-playing ability to the limit. He could go no further than this and began to slip back in later albums as synthesizers came more to the fore. This may have been due to the fact that, as a three-piece, it needed an extraordinary ability to master the lead and rhythm guitar balance with only one guitar.

However, as is so often the case with many other bands, Rush could not sustain this. "Hemispheres" became almost too pretentious and pompous and veered towards the sort of virtuosity driven prog rock that I have always found dull. Two albums later and I was buying no more Rush. They were not able to recreate this level of skill and perfection and I lost interest within a few more years and moved on to the sounds of post punk age.
Rating: 8/10