In a long and brilliant career, Canadian trio Rush were described in various ways.
Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett proclaimed them “the high priests of conceptual rock”.
Critic Robert Christgau, writing in 1977, dismissed them as “the most obnoxious band on the zonked teen circuit.”
But perhaps it was Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers who best summed up Rush: “The world’s biggest cult band.”
Career sales of more than 40 million records were achieved with artistic integrity fully intact.
The line-up established in 1974 – Alex Lifeson (guitar), Geddy Lee (bass, lead vocals and keyboards), and Neil Peart (drums and lyrics) – remained unchanged until Peart’s death in 2020 signalled the end of Rush.
Across 19 studio albums, the band’s music – its essence, progressive hard rock – was continually redefined.
The “conceptual rock” that Kirk Hammett spoke of was the fabric of 1970s albums such as 2112 and Hemispheres, in which epic tracks swallowed up entire sides of vinyl.
In the '80s, the sound was updated on Moving Pictures, the band’s biggest seller, and in what Lee described as “our keyboard period”.
From the ’90s on, there was a return to the core principles of a classic guitar-based power trio. And with 2012’s Clockwork Angels, their swan song, Rush turned full circle with a first complete concept album.
19. Test For Echo (1996)
There are many great bands that have made downright awful albums. Metallica’s St. Anger perhaps the last word on that score. Rush never served up a turkey like that, but their standards slipped on Test For Echo. There were flashes of the old magic there and there – in the title track, Resist and the heavy-hitting Driven. But the remainder of the album is largely uninspired, and the wacky humour in Dog Years is the worst five minutes in the entire Rush discography.
18. Vapor Trails (2002)
This was the comeback album that few had expected – Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson least of all. In 1998, Neil Peart had told his bandmates he was finished with Rush after the recent deaths of his daughter and wife. Some of Peart’s lyrics on Vapor Trails – notably in the song Ghost Rider – gave some insight insight into how he rebuilt his life. Similarly, much of the music had a raw edge, although an overly compressed sound necessitated a remix in 2013. Vapor Trails was not a great album, but in the circumstances it was more than enough.
17. Snakes & Arrows (2007)
Snakes & Arrows arrived five years after Vapor Trails but was recorded in just five weeks. Producer Nick Raskulinecz was a relative rookie but had already worked on two Foo Fighters albums, and as a hardcore Rush fan he encouraged the trio to relax into this record and not worry if they ended up referencing past glories. This was evident in the first seconds of the first track, Far Cry, which sounds like a throwback to 1978’s Hemispheres. Also included are not one but three instrumentals, with some thrilling interplay in the The Main Monkey Business.
16. Counterparts (1993)
In the ’80s, producer Peter Collins worked on the two Rush albums most dominated by synthesizers – Power Windows and Hold Your Fire. When he returned for Counterparts, at a time when grunge was ascendant, there was a greater focus on guitars in a classic power-trio sound. The album is bookended by two outstanding tracks – beginning with Animate, a full-throttle rock song, and ending with Everyday Glory, an uplifting anthem reminiscent of U2 and Simple Minds.
15. Presto (1989)
After four albums dominated by synths, Rush returned to a more guitar-centric style on Presto. “This album,” Geddy Lee said, “was a reaction against technology.” Producer Rupert Hine also instigated a major change. “I asked Geddy to lower his voice by an octave,” Hine said. A heavy tone was set in the album’s opening track Show Don’t Tell, built around a stinging riff from Alex Lifeson. But the best track is more subtle. The Pass was Neil Peart’s meditation on teenage suicide, and the music had a perfectly judged emotional pitch. On an album that is much overlooked, The Pass is among the best songs Rush ever recorded.
14. Clockwork Angels (2012)
It turned out to be the last Rush album, and it was a perfect note on which to finish. From the high priests of conceptual rock, Clockwork Angels was a grandiose concept album – and their first complete concept album at that. With a plot line described as “an individual trying to follow his dreams in a dystopian future”, there were echoes of the band’s classic conceptual piece 2112. Most impressive of all was the quality of the songwriting, with power and complexity in tracks such as Caravan and Headlong Flight, and beauty in the finale, The Garden.
13. Caress Of Steel (1975)
Geddy Lee once remarked of the third Rush album: “You can smell the hash oil.” There was also more than a whiff of self-indulgence about Caress Of Steel. The album’s trippy vibe hit a heady peak with The Fountain Of Lamneth, a 20-minute prog rock odyssey in six parts. At a relatively snappy 12 minutes, The Necromancer was only slightly less ostentatious. But there was a lighter touch evident in the Zeppelin-style groover Lakeside Park, and muscular riffing in the album’s most famous track, Bastille Day.
12. Hold Your Fire (1987)
Hold Your Fire was co-produced by the band with Peter Collins, who recalled to Classic Rock magazine: “Producers such as Trevor Horn and I were into the hi-tech sounds of the ’80s: Fairlights, Synclaviers, all that cutting edge stuff.” The result was the slickest-sounding Rush album, with a standout track in Time Stand Still, featuring guest vocalist Aimee Mann from the band ’Til Tuesday. Always thinking outside the box, the band wanted to use an English brass band for the song Mission. “We tried it,” Collins said, “but it didn’t work.”
11. Roll The Bones (1991)
Producer Rupert Hine called Roll The Bones “a very playful Rush album”. This was certainly true of its title track, featuring a goofy rap delivered in a comedy voice by Geddy Lee – because their intended guest star, John Cleese, was unavailable! But this album also includes one of the band’s most powerfully emotive songs, Bravado. Other highlights include the dramatic opening track Dreamtime and the elegantly phrased Ghost Of A Chance.
10. Rush (1974)
On this debut, the influence of Led Zeppelin was writ large in Lifeson’s heavy riffing and in the way Lee yelped like a geeky Robert Plant. It was also the only album the band made with drummer John Rutsey, who played hard, no frills, but was fired due to poor health and the standard ‘musical differences’. What shines out from the album’s best tracks – the freewheeling Finding My Way and the monolithic Working Man – is the blazing energy and raw rock ’n’ roll edge that would, in turn, be sacrificed to loftier ambitions.
9. Fly By Night (1975)
The first album with Neil Peart was a big leap forward. Not only was the new guy a more accomplished drummer than John Rutsey, he was smart – nicknamed ‘The Professor’ – and became the band’s lyricist. As a result, Fly By Night was a defining album for Rush, with a more finessed power in Anthem, and a strong progressive influence illustrated in By-Tor & The Snow Dog.
8. Grace Under Pressure (1984)
Grace Under Pressure is the Rush connoisseurs’ choice – a lesser-known album, albeit a hit in 1984. Alex Lifeson called it “the most satisfying of all our records”. There is a heavy dramatic tension in songs such as Distant Early Warning and Between The Wheels; a playful, trippy vibe in Red Lenses; and a profound sense of depth and weight in Afterimage, in which Peart wrote beautifully in what he described as “a response to a tragedy… and looking for a reason why”.
7. Permanent Waves (1980)
The band’s first album of a new decade was a game changer. In reaction to the convoluted, bombastic style of previous album Hemispheres, a modernized Rush emerged on Permanent Waves, as symbolized by hit single The Spirit Of Radio, a euphoric rock anthem in which trio’s virtuoso chops were combined with a zinging pop sensibility. And in the nine-minute finale Natural Science was a new kind of Rush epic, with Peart’s eco-conscious lyrics far removed from the fantasy themes of old. From here, they never looked back.
6. Power Windows (1985)
In the mid-’80s, Lee’s admitted “obsession” with synthesizers left Lifeson as the odd man out in a power trio that no longer functioned with guitar at its core. But while Lifeson felt marginalized, he sucked it up for the greater good; and in what was effectively a supporting role on Power Windows, he played brilliantly in keyboard-driven, emotionally charged tracks such as Marathon, Middletown Dreams and Mystic Rhythms. For one famous fan, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, this is the greatest of all Rush albums.
5. Signals (1982)
The opening track on the band’s ninth album was a sign of what was to come – for Lifeson, ominously so. Synthesizers had been a texture in their music since the mid-’70s, but on Subdivisions they were front and centre. This was also one of many powerful, expertly crafted songs on Signals. The reggae influence first heard in The Spirit Of Radio was at the heart of Digital Man and New World Man, and the theme of adolescent yearning in Subdivisions was developed in the supercharged rock song The Analog Kid.
4. Hemispheres (1978)
The last Rush album of the ’70s was also the last of its kind, the title track a vast piece in the style of 2112 and titled, rather wonderfully, Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres. The album also featured forest-themed parable The Trees and, in the dazzling, 12-part instrumental La Villa Strangiato, the band’s greatest ensemble performance. There was, however, a sense within the group that they were becoming formulaic. A reinvention was coming. They left behind them, in Hemispheres, a monument to excess.
3. 2112 (1976)
It is the definitive Rush album of the ’70s, and it saved their career. In danger of being dropped by their record company after their first three albums had stiffed, the band threw everything they had at 2112. On side one, the title track, in which an Orwellian sci-fi drama played out over 20 minutes at high intensity. On side two, five orthodox numbers, including telltale pothead song A Passage To Bangkok. A cult hit in ’76, 2112 threw Rush a lifeline. Many years on, it’s a rock classic.
2. A Farewell To Kings (1977)
In the year of punk, Rush had as the centrepiece of their fifth studio album the 11-minute fantasia Xanadu, inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1798 poem Kubla Khan. And yet, in this album’s title track, there were echoes of the Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen in Peart’s small-‘r’ republican diatribe. A lighter touch was evident on Closer To The Heart, which became Canada’s unofficial rock anthem. And to finish there was Cygnus X-1, a space rock adventure that ended mid-suspense – to be continued on the following year’s Hemispheres.
1. Moving Pictures (1981)
The best selling Rush album, and their masterpiece. As prefigured by Permanent Waves, the modern Rush came into sharp focus on Moving Pictures – in the clean lines and lean power of songs such as Tom Sawyer and Red Barchetta. Their love of progressive rock lingered in The Camera Eye – “an homage to Genesis”, Lee admitted – and in the tricksy instrumental YYZ. But with this album, the band reached for, and found, a global audience, even if Peart’s lyrics in Limelight signalled a retreat from fame. With Rush, there was always complexity.
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