review by thomas

6 songs, three longish and three shorter. The shorter songs are the beautiful "Madrigal", complete with acoustic guitar and mini-Moog, and the single hit "Closer to the Heart" with a variety of percussion sounds from Peart. Although it became a minor hit it's not a commercial nonsense song, it's a good rocking song. The third short song is "Cinderella Man" which is a half-acoustic/half-electric kind of thing, and the guitars delivered by Alex Lifeson are the highlights of the piece. Otherwise it's quite forgetable and the album's only real weakness.

Now to the long ones. The title track begins with a part played on the classical guitar - wonderful. Then the rest comes in with full force. Quite hard this one, and maybe a little underrated, it's a Rush classic. The most well known piece from this album - apart from "Closer to the Heart" - are without a doubt the mighty "Xanadu". Lyrically based on the Coleridge poem "Kublai Khan". Starts off with various sound-effects and bells (such as orchestra bells and tubular bells) building up a mood and then goes into the main part with great vocals (great sounding) from Geddy Lee. Then the mood from the intro comes back before the finale. Next we have "Cygnus X-I" maybe THE best Rush song so far. It's a bit spacier than the others, due to heavy use of the mini-Moog and bass pedal synthesizer. Also, the lyrics are clearly set in space. Geddy's bass are the heart of this song together with some fine drumming from Neil. It begins with an instrumental movement before the vocals comes in. This movement, and the whole song, gives me gooseflesh each time I listen to it, it's hard to come closer to bliss than when listening to this song.

All-in-all this is the most even Rush work up to that date (1977). Together with "2112" a good place to start for those unfamiliar with Rush.