Chapter 7 - Rush - Signals

Chapter 7 

What if you're trying to mums the word on the epic concept, but people figure it out anyway? Here's Rush's Signals. 

Sometimes Neil Peart is too obtuse even for me. I mostly get the gist of what he's saying, but sometimes there's a fair bit of intense, Claudio Sanchez level, grammatical confusion happening. Other times, like in Digital Man, i think he just picked mystical sounding places because they rhyme. 

This isn't an album review though, it's a concept review. 1982, Rush was a full year ahead of Styx in realizing that people don't want the epic concept shoved in their faces anymore. They want fleetingly enjoyable garbage. I don't care enough to go find the source inteview again, but an interviewer asked him "but isn't this equally a concept album anyway?" Neil replied "shhhh, you trying to get me fired?" Maybe he didn't say those exact words, but close enough for Cold War hand grenades, anyway. 

I prefer being blunt. Suburbia is crap. Cities are cool for a while, but eventually the inponderables of existence catch up to you and everyone is ready to blast off in the space ship for anything other than the rank and file existential malaise of this quadrant of the longitudinal hemisphere. South America's no prize, but North America has sucking your soul out through your nostrils down to a science. 

Fun fact, i mistakenly thought the spoken voice in the lead-off track was saying "science" instead of the actual title "subdivisions," for way longer than any individual should allowed to be an idiot. Don't be shocked, i'm still the same guy who couldn't put shouting "tusk" and calling your album Tusk together, and was one time earnestly baffled that Thanksgiving occurred on a Thusday. For a smart guy i can be shockingly and acutely dumb by way of intellectual laziness. 

Subdivisions isn't nearly as overt as anything by Styx, but it is coherent. Wanting to escape because everyone keeps interrupting your vibe, imponderable things that happen while trying to escape, and big shocker, making it to Florida and stowing away on a spaceship to actually escape. Musk, Bezos, Branson, are they all just subconsciously living out the fantasy of a Rush album? No, they're just douchebags with rocketship money, use it or lose it is their underlying motive. Good for STEM programs, i guess, but you should meet some of the morons with plumbing and HVAC licenses i deal with on a daily basis. There're some guys i wouldn't trust to not dig a hole even if i specifically paid them to not dig a hole in my yard fiddling around with unsuspecting peoples' electricty and sewer drainage, when the only demostrable skill they possess is still being alive after ingesting all that coke and meth. Terrifying. 

Side B! 

I've been reading a fascinating essay by Kayla McKinney while listening. Go check it out here: 

https://americanpopularculture.com/archive/music/rush.htm 

I'm fascinated by the fake blueprint on the back cover, and how it seems to fit so perfectly with the music on this album. I can't qualify that connection, there's just something so cold and calculated about the music, exactly like a fabricated cookie-cutter community, which is absolutely insane because this might be the pinnacle of rock band as medium creativity. It sounds like what your brain would invent to escape from that slacks and v-neck sweaters kind of frat-house reality Neil and Geddy and Alex literally hated growing up. The cynical side of my brain is just screaming that even the escape itself is so cold and calculated that it's practically an ordained stupification, like it's not an escape at all, you've justified been tricked into believing that it is. That's probably me over thinking it, because that's what i do. Regardless, stellar album, and not just because that dalmation is about to pee on a fire hydrant, but because it's musically amazing. I think Signals might be my favorite Rush album, simply for the fact that it sounds like all emotion and exuberance has been grinded out of Geddy Lee's voice by the sheer stultifying tedium of a 9 to 5 mow the lawn on the weekend existence, not to mention Subdivisions actually sounds like it's just a never ending loop of the same old same old. If Bottle of Beef had an award for Most Spot On Realization of a Concept by a Dog with Spots On, Signals would win, no need for deliberation. 

This concludes the weekday portion of our program, join us again tomorrow for some of the most batshit insane things Compy found scattered around the old forgotten trash heap. Can i cram 5 completely insane selections into one little 3-day weekend? Of course i can, but no spoilers this time; total crap shoot for the second half of this 10-album epic brownian meander.

Chapter 8