8/28/2023 0 Comments Rush clockwork angels![]() ![]() This review was originally published in Classic Rock 172, in July 2012. And that, more than anything else, is the mark of true greatness. The sound of a band who are entering their fifth decade more confident than ever before? Undoubtedly. The best album Rush have made? It’s up near the top. So, is Clockwork Angels the best album of the year? It’s too early to tell. There are echoes of Rush’s past – you can catch a sniff of Bastille Day here and an echo of Working Man there, but it looks forward far more than it looks back. Kudos here to co-producer Nick Rasckulinecz, a man whose motivational skills are clearly matched only by the band’s own willingness to be motivated. The Eastern-tinged flourishes that weave through the muscular The Anarchist enhance rather than overwhelm it there’s a tangible warmth to the exuberant Wish Them Well, the album’s most uplifting moment and the ringing chords of The Garden provide a suitably stately finale to the whole show. The music of the Canadian progressive-rock trio makes its way to the comic-book page beginning in March with the six-issue Boom Studios miniseries Clockwork Angels, based on the groups 2012. And it’s a terrific-sounding one, too – copper-bottomed but crystal clear, dense but light of touch. It is the first and only full-length concept album that they’ve ever made, where previously they’ve only made. It all adds up to a clear-sighted, modern rock record. Clockwork Angels is a concept album made in 2012 by the progressive rock band Rush. ![]() And Neil Peart has never sounded looser or livelier as he races around his drum kit. They keep a lid on extending songs beyond their natural life only three songs exceed the seven-minute mark. Of course, the musicianship is impeccable, but it’s never showy. There’s some stuff about watches and anarchists, and a nagging feeling that it’s all about being a tiny cog in some vast celestial machinery.Ĭonceptual leanings aside, Clockwork Angels isn’t a prog album. That will be useful, given that it’s not especially clear what Clockwork Angels is actually about. They’ve roped in sci-fi author Kevin J Anderson to help out with the conceptual heavy lifting via a spin-off novel that will presumably spell out what’s going on. The lyrical spine of Clockwork Angels is apparently a tale written by drummer Neil Peart and inspired by both the steampunk movement and Voltaire’s 18th-century French satire Candide. Of the pair, Caravan edges it thanks to the way it hops between a muscular, circular riff and wide, chiming spaciousness in a heartbeat, though the admirably cynical BU2B – or Brought Up To Believe – is crucial to the album’s concept.Īh, The Concept. Both appear here, opening the album in a punchy one-two. The two teasers they handed out last year as part of Record Store Day, Caravan and BU2B, are representative of the album: taut but inventive, intricate yet never flashy. Where their last few albums have felt like triumphs of intention over execution, this one finds a band not just firing on all cylinders, but also doing a very good job of sounding more relevant than ever before. Clockwork Angels doesn’t sound like the work of men entering their fifth decade as a working band. Whether the wave of goodwill spurred them on while making the album isn’t clear but, if the end result is anything to go by, it certainly hasn’t done them any harm. Check out the best Prime Day deals for music fansĪnd so, as Rush return with their first record in five years, and their 20th in total, both their stock and their profile are higher than ever.This led to Rush appearing on US comic Stephen Colbert’s top-rated chat show, which pushed them further into uncharted territories. The 2009 documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage rightly saluted them as one of rock’s original frontiersmen, with celebrity fanboys such as Trent Reznor and Billy Corgan lining up to ladle on the love. The series follows its teenage hero, Owen Hardy (who’s “a lot like Voltaire’s Candide,” according to Anderson), as he leaves behind his small village origins to join a circus that features mechanical fortune tellers en route to the clockwork metropolis known as Crown City, home to the Watchmaker and Clockwork Angels.Īnderson described the series, illustrated by newcomer Nick Robles, as having “a charm and an innocence and a sense of wonder to it that is the complete opposite of, say, the grim, gritty future of The Matrix.Recently, though, the Canadian trio have found themselves engaging with everything they’d previously run away from. “Kevin and I had talked for years about combining a novel and an album in some fashion, but I guess the idea had to grow up as Kevin and I did - gaining maturity and confidence in our own separate crafts, while gaining the life experience necessary to give the story its scale and depth,” Peart told USA Today. STORY: Boom! Studios Reschedules Delayed ‘Day Men’Īnderson has previously adapted the Clockwork Angels album into prose, likening the process of transferring the album’s music into other mediums as being “like writing the novel to Pink Floyd’s The Wall or Sgt. ![]()
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