Rush Discography Discussion 2: Caress of Steel (1975)

[Shadow]

Well, Anthem's somewhat enjoyable too (and I for one absolutely don't get the hate regarding Ayn Rand - sure, the gal might have had some screws in her head loose, on the other hand some of her ideas were quite interesting for her time and - and I can't stress this enough - The Fountainhead, ideological doorstopper that it is, is actually readable and enjoyable all the way through. Yeah, it took me by surprise too. It also seems somewhat funny to me how even some of the metalheads on the web are offended by the Rand-influenced lyrics while not being offended by gore and/or Satan worship. Talk about "edgy")

Well, between Peart's lyrics and Lee's vocals, "Anthem" is just about the perfect musical depiction of a teenage boy who's just had his mind blown by Ayn Rand. I'm just not sure it was meant to be a comedy number.

Still a pretty good song though. Along with the title track, it's the only song off the album that still sticks in my head, years after I last played it.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

Well, between Peart's lyrics and Lee's vocals, "Anthem" is just about the perfect musical depiction of a teenage boy who's just had his mind blown by Ayn Rand. I'm just not sure it was meant to be a comedy number.

It's not as if we Maiden fans haven't had a few of those ourselves (To Tame an Alexander, anyone? )

 

[Mosh]

That wasn't my intention - since I wasn't a member when the first discussion took place and since I wanted to go through the discography and somehow summarise my feelings, I used this thread for that. I could stop if you felt this was inappropriate.

Don't worry about it, if people think it's too early they have the option of not participating. I'm excited to have another go at this, been awhile since I've listened to some of these albums.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

Hm, I've listened to FbN very patiently and attentively before moving on to Caress... and my opinion is still mostly the same.

I mean, I think I actually started to like some of the songs more - Anthem, Making Memories - but I cannot say whether it's their real qualities or whether I'm just so used to them I actually like them more. Compared to the debut (which is just your simple rock fun) and Caress (which is alternatively great and laughably bad), it's just way too... average. In the End is subjectively longer than 2112 and Hemispheres combined, IMHO.

And like I said before - ByTor is actually very enjoyable, even including the in the middle.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

1975 - Caress of Steel

"All around us: Angry Birds
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast

For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guillotine claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the centuries
Power isn't all that money buys..."


It's been a long time, but now I finally think I can write down my feelings about this album.

Caress. Everybody hates it, everybody puts it down (I remember reading Geddy saying they were mostly high through that time), but I think it's rather unfair. Yes, the album is terribly uneven (more on that later) and the lyrics are jumping from silly to pretentious seemingly at random... but: 1.) it's not boring, at least side A isn't, 2.) I could remember all songs (or parts of them, anyway) after the first bloody listen. I could not say that about the previous albums, much as I still like the debut and think it's underrated.

First, we're greeted with Bastille Day - an excellent tune, in fact, probably the best out of the first three albums (my personal attachment to Working Man and Fly by Night notwithstanding). This is where the band starts to sound like Rush (there were hints on the previous album already, but like I said before, Anthem sounds rather undercooked) and I can go crazy about the song. Very catchy, too.

Bald... Well... The lyrics are intentionally stupid, but from the musical point of view it's a cool "simple hard rock" tune, of the kind they would soon stop doing altogether and IMHO much better than those on Fly by Night. And though the coda isn't Alex's best moment ever, I still feel strangely attracted to his soloing here. Overall, it's pretty underrated (though still silly).

Lakeside Park is a very cute and gentle song, one which I think Making Memories strived to become, yet failed at the very last moment. My second highlight of the album and it gets a spin from me quite often.

Necromancer... Let me just tell you that if they cut out the morbidly disgusting voiceover, I would nearly love the song. Yes, this moment reminds me of Child in Time, that moment (the very next one, in fact) reminds me of Alice Cooper's Be My Lover, but nontheless, I think the song works. But the voiceover, oh God. What a buggeration.

That leaves us with Fountain, as the worst song here and the longest one at that. Some parts are actually rather nice, some, however, are atrocious (leave that psychedelic bollocks to someone else, please). It also has no flow whatsoever and it has all these deep silences between the parts. At least there are no more travellers.

So, in the end, it's not that bad. My most listened-to early Rush album, in fact. It definitely has its moments and I would still buy it again, if I had the chance. I'd love to hear Necromancer live, butchered by voiceover or not.

 

[Deus_Adrian]

Ive been a Rush fan for 30 some odd years. They are actually my favorite band. However the only time I get the urge to listen to Caress is when I want to convince myself that I actually like it.

 

[Mosh]

Caress is a strange album. Uneven would probably be the best word to describe it, nowhere near the worst Rush album. It really shows the band in an identity crisis. It's like they wanted to make something a bit more interesting and unique than blues rockers, but didn't know how to do it nor were they brave enough to do a whole album of that sort of thing. So you have songs like I Think I'm Going Bald which is a style they clearly aren't interested in anymore but somehow feel obligated to continue against The Fountain Of Lamneth which is a complete mess. But they weren't going to write 2112 overnight.

This album isn't without it's great moments though, Bastille Day and Lakeside Park are both songs that take the best things about Fly By Night and makes them better. I don't think Rush gets enough credit for their softer 70s tunes. Making Memories, Lakeside Park, Tears, Different Strings, all really great songs that would give us a hint to their more melodic 80s music. Lakeside Park is also one of Pearts great lyrical offerings, you really get the sense of nostalgia and his lyrics (combined with the sublime lyrics) really puts you in this location. I don't know what Peart's Lakeside Park looked like, but there's a Lakeside nearby where I live and that's what I imagine when listening to this song.

I have a hard time choosing between Bastille Day and Anthem, but both are awesome rockers. Bastille Day really has a triumphant sound to it that wouldn't be so out of place tonally on 2112. Easily the best song on the album.

The Necromancer is an OK song. Of the two epics it's definitely the best, but still a far cry from what they would do later on.
The narration is pretty lame but they're trying something different. I do really like the way this song builds up though, with the spacey, hypnotic guitars in the beginning and the droning beat from Neil. It creates a great atmosphere. The main riff is worthy of A Farewell To Kings. In fact I would've loved to hear that Rush do a song like this. I guess that's what Cygnus X-1 was, come to think of it. But it doesn't take long for this song to get going and it stays interesting for the majority of the song. The jam in the middle is awesome, although Alex Lifeson hasn't yet developed his solo chops. Really the biggest flaw with this song is how awkward the structure is. Granted, even 2112 has structure issues and they wouldn't have solidly arranged epics until Xanadu really. But despite the clunkiness, I enjoy all the individual parts of Necromancer. The sum of those parts just makes it hard to come back to the song often.

And of course the infamous Fountain of Lamneth. I still remember the first time I heard the album, this song in particular. I had heard bad things about it but I still went in optimistic. After all, this was Rush and I was a sucker for side long epics. Really as soon as the song started I knew I wasn't in for greatness. The opening guitar sounded so dull and generic. Luckily that part doesn't last long and the rocking part that follows is actually really good. It's a pretty obvious nod to Watcher of the Sky by Genesis, but they give it that Rush twist.

The whole "In the Valley" section is pretty good and would be fine as its own song. Which brings me to one of the biggest problems with this song. It doesn't really feel like a song, just a bunch of songs haphazardly glued together.The parts are all separated by gaps of silence and don't really connect at all musically. So I'm going to review it as such.

Once the In the Valley section ends, it's all downhill. You know the band is just trying to fill up a slab of vinyl when 4 minutes in they're throwing in a drum solo.

The No One At the Bridge section is an interesting melody (very Opethian actually), but it just feels like a new song. It actually has a really good Alex Lifeson solo toward the end, although that background melody begins to grate after awhile.

Panacea is pretty much Rivendell 2. It makes me yawn. To be fair, there are some nice melodies in there, it just makes this whole Lamneth thing really exhausting.

Bacchus Plateau is a decent rocker but unremarkable. It's a much needed upbeat moment after Pancea and No One At the Bridge, but like every other part here it starts getting very repetitive after awhile.

And finally The Fountain which brings us back to familiar territory with the awesome Watcher of the Skies riff. It seems obvious at this point that they wrote the In the Valley and Fountain parts first and shoved a bunch of nonsense in between. This whole piece does feel like a journey, for better or worse, I'll give them that.

So overall, similar problems to The Necromancer but with a lot more moments that don't go anywhere. It has its good moments and it's cool to see them attempting something greater but listening to the whole thing as one song is just too exhausting. I wonder if this album would be better received if instead of 3 long songs and two short songs, it was just 9 songs of varying lengths with the epics broken up into normal songs (which is what they are anyway). There are parts of both The Necromancer and Fountain of Lamneth that I would listen to frequently if they were isolated.

Revisiting this album was fun. Some stuff was just as bad as I remembered, but a lot of it wasn't, so that's nice. Lakeside Park and Bastille Day are still my favorites, and the only songs that are truly worth going back to.

Bring on 2112!

 

[terrell39]

1975 - Caress of Steel

"All around us: Angry Birds
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast

For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guillotine claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the centuries
Power isn't all that money buys..."


It's been a long time, but now I finally think I can write down my feelings about this album.

Caress. Everybody hates it, everybody puts it down (I remember reading Geddy saying they were mostly high through that time), but I think it's rather unfair. Yes, the album is terribly uneven (more on that later) and the lyrics are jumping from silly to pretentious seemingly at random... but: 1.) it's not boring, at least side A isn't, 2.) I could remember all songs (or parts of them, anyway) after the first bloody listen. I could not say that about the previous albums, much as I still like the debut and think it's underrated.

First, we're greeted with Bastille Day - an excellent tune, in fact, probably the best out of the first three albums (my personal attachment to Working Man and Fly by Night notwithstanding). This is where the band starts to sound like Rush (there were hints on the previous album already, but like I said before, Anthem sounds rather undercooked) and I can go crazy about the song. Very catchy, too.

Bald... Well... The lyrics are intentionally stupid, but from the musical point of view it's a cool "simple hard rock" tune, of the kind they would soon stop doing altogether and IMHO much better than those on Fly by Night. And though the coda isn't Alex's best moment ever, I still feel strangely attracted to his soloing here. Overall, it's pretty underrated (though still silly).

Lakeside Park is a very cute and gentle song, one which I think Making Memories strived to become, yet failed at the very last moment. My second highlight of the album and it gets a spin from me quite often.

Necromancer... Let me just tell you that if they cut out the morbidly disgusting voiceover, I would nearly love the song. Yes, this moment reminds me of Child in Time, that moment (the very next one, in fact) reminds me of Alice Cooper's Be My Lover, but nontheless, I think the song works. But the voiceover, oh God. What a buggeration.

That leaves us with Fountain, as the worst song here and the longest one at that. Some parts are actually rather nice, some, however, are atrocious (leave that psychedelic bollocks to someone else, please). It also has no flow whatsoever and it has all these deep silences between the parts. At least there are no more travellers.

So, in the end, it's not that bad. My most listened-to early Rush album, in fact. It definitely has its moments and I would still buy it again, if I had the chance. I'd love to hear Necromancer live, butchered by voiceover or not.

"All around us angry birds?!?!?!?!"
It's "all around us anger burns"

 

[RTC]

I've actually not listened to the first 3 Rush albums; I've always been advised to skip them. Still listened to songs like Working Man and Fly By Night of course, but I should probably get around to them; would be interesting to compare the maturity growth of the band.

2112 was solid the last time I remember listening to it.

 

[terrell39]

Remember in the film Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage when Geddy said there is a small group of fans that REALLY like this lp (COS) and are always requesting for the material to be brought back to the live set? That's me!
It was a dream come true to see them bring Lakeside Park back to the live set during tbeir R40 encore in the medley of older material. My favorite version is from the live lp ATWAS.

 

[Mosh]

I've actually not listened to the first 3 Rush albums; I've always been advised to skip them. Still listened to songs like Working Man and Fly By Night of course, but I should probably get around to them; would be interesting to compare the maturity growth of the band.

They are worth hearing, especially Fly By Night. The most interesting thing is seeing how they evolved into 2112, but there are also some genuinely good songs on each album.

 

[MrKnickerbocker]

Fly By Night is worth hearing, but these are still my 3 least favorite Rush albums (with CAS being at the bottom).

 

[Mosh]

I would take both Fly By Night and Caress of Steel over Test For Echo, at least.

 

[Deus_Adrian]

"All around us angry birds?!?!?!?!"
It's "all around us anger burns"

Lol. I thought there was something odd there.

 

[terrell39]

I would take both Fly By Night and Caress of Steel over Test For Echo, at least.

I love TFE. Much heavier & louder than the 80s keyboard era lps like GUP, PW, & HYF.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

You know the band is just trying to fill up a slab of vinyl when 4 minutes in they're throwing in a drum solo.

And don't forget that bollocks which follows, between 5:00-17. Probably the most embarassing moment in their catalogue for me, except maybe for Geddy trying to be a macho man in the "In the Mood" mating call on the debut.

I would take both Fly By Night and Caress of Steel over Test For Echo, at least.

I don't remember TFE all that much apart from the title track and Driven, which are both excellent, IMHO. Will see when we get to that one.

The No One At the Bridge section is an interesting melody (very Opethian actually)

Indeed it is! I've never noticed that before.

I more or less agree with your assessment of the various Lamneth parts, except for maybe Panacea, which I like more (at least more than Rivendell - it's shorter, if nothing else). It does sound like a journey. A somewhat long and tedious one.

To be utterly fair, 2112 is very disjointed as well and that "sudden stop->absolutely different song" would be preserved in all its glory, but at least all the ideas would be good. But that's for the next entry.

It was a dream come true to see them bring Lakeside Park back to the live set during tbeir R40 encore in the medley of older material.

That must have been a treat.

"All around us angry birds?!?!?!?!"
It's "all around us anger burns"

Lol. I thought there was something odd there.

Oh, silly me. I nearly thought the 1975 song mentions the 2009 iPad video game. I stand corrected.


Also, yesterday as I was listening to FbN in my car, about the 1:54 mark (the battle part) of By-Tor my wife started to laugh uncontrollably, because those deep noises reminded her too much of a pig's grunt. Mind ye, she likes and respects the band... but try hearing the song the same way now.

Also - @SixesAlltheway , where are ye?

 

[Forostar]

Judas, I realize you've said several things about the album showing that you appreciate certain songs or aspects.
Still, I found the amount of negativity that's left (and the intensity of some of these statements) is somewhat in contrast with "So, in the end, it's not that bad."and "My most listened-to early Rush album, in fact. It definitely has its moments and I would still buy it again, if I had the chance. I'd love to hear Necromancer live, butchered by voiceover or not."

Here goes:

the album is terribly uneven

the lyrics are jumping from silly to pretentious seemingly at random

The lyrics are intentionally stupid

the coda isn't Alex's best moment ever

morbidly disgusting voiceover

the voiceover, oh God. What a buggeration.

the worst song here and the longest one at that.

some, however, are atrocious

(leave that psychedelic bollocks to someone else, please).

It also has no flow whatsoever

and it has all these deep silences between the parts.

At least there are no more travellers.

Ehhh, yeah, sure.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

I stand more or less behind everything I've said. Yes, there are absolutely terrible moments, but usually you get a really great or at least pleasant moment right after. As a whole, altough the album has one of the worst Rush moments ever, it's fun, a joyful ride through the good and bad which is memorable and it doesn't take itself that seriously.

Let me therefore stress the fact that even though some parts of the album are really bad, I can like it anyway. I indeed hate the voiceover on Necromancer very much, for example, yet overall the song is more interesting to me than another song, not as offensive, but bland (like half of Fly by Night is to me, although it might be much better from the "objective" point of view).

Maybe I should have made a clearer distinction between an assessment of "objective" quality and subjective preference. The lyrics to Bald are stupid and it's definitely intentional IMHO, but 1.) the music's great, 2.) when I concentrate on the lyrics, I release a guilty snigger and think "so what?" Doesn't make the lyrics any better, though.

BTW - "deep silences and flow" - I recognise that fact and consider it a letdown, though I don't want to press the issue that much, because - as I've written above - 2112 is similar in that regard and I absolutely love that one.

 

[Mosh]

2112 still flows better though and has less silences.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

2112 still flows better though and has less silences.

Definitely true, though silences aren't the main thing. SDOIT has next to no silences, yet still sounds just randomly glued together, pretty much as Lamneth sounds to me.