Well, okay. I'll keep surprising you.
It's loud and it's noisy, it's messily produced, all but five songs are uninteresting, the guitars just blare at you, Geddy's vocals are clearly not what they used to be, and for the first time I don't care what the lyrics are because it's all just a musical mess. I've listened to it four times to try to "get" it but I couldn't.
"Caravan," "BU2B," "Seven Cities of Gold," "Wish Them Well" and "The Garden" are OK. But just OK. In the right mood I can groove on "Caravan." Honestly, this is pretty much on the same level as Vapor Trails for me; they're trying hard to be badass and rock out but the songwriting isn't there anymore. And like VT, there's a few redeeming songs but nothing that makes the album great.
I'm actually disappointed, though, that there is no palpably interesting concept linking it all. I always imagined that there was some incredible story going on inside Geddy's wailing and difficult-to-discern vocals, but I guess not. As it is, these last three albums they did have been disappointing, and as much as I love Rush, as far as I'm concerned, their last really killer album was Counterparts.
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