Rush - A Farewell to Kings
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Free Music Notes for A Farewell to Kings
Free Music Review: What Else is There?
Hit: 5 Stars
I didn't know about Rush until their "Vaper Trails" CD, after which I read everything and anything I could find them. To be honest I discovered Rush at the right time, because I was just getting into progressive rock and discovering Rush led me to the unbelievable "2112" CD (which still sends shivers up my spine when I hear it.)
"A Farewell to Kings" caught my attention because it seemed everyone was debating which was a better prog. CD "2112" or "A Farewell to Kings." So based solely on that debate I bought "A Farewell to Kings." To this day "A Farewell to Kings" is still my favorite LP by Rush.
I'm actually listening to it as I write this review. It's a CD that I never tire of. It's pure enjoyment. The title song starts off kind of with a Rennasaince sound that grows with birds slowly into a shower of bass and drums and becomes a driving rocker with one of the best bass lines I've ever heard.
Xanadu - 11 minutes of pure joyment. My sister can't stand it because she doesn't like just music, which is what the first half of the song is. This song is by far the stand out track on the CD refering to an actual poem written by a man on opium, who supposedly dreamed the 130 or so lines but forgot them when he was called to a meeting and Xanadu (the short poem) is the only part he remembered when actually wrote it down. This song reminds me of a girl I knew I considered my best friend before I move and still do.
Closer to the Heart - an outstading song, no wonder it became a hit. My only problem with it is the length, but any longer and it may have not been as great who knows.
Cinderalla Man - If I'm correct it's based off the movie that Mr. Deeds was a remake of. This song is more mellow and melodic than rock driven but by no means is it bad or the low of the CD. In fact there isn't a song on this CD that isn't great.
The last two songs are different lyrically (Madrigal) and musically (Cygnus X-1), which when I first listened to it, it reminded me of bands today that do scream-singing, though they don't really scream, the use mostly distortion over their voice. This is a prequel to the main event on Hemispheres which has my favorite epic song on it. But this CD is by far my favorite Rush CD. I would recommend this to anyone and have.
Free Music Review: Mature and well-produced hard-progressive Rush
Hit: 5 Stars
After the success of the powerfull lenghty epical "2112", the canadian trio Rush started a new era of well produced and complex albums and left behind the zeppelin-hard-rock of their three first albums. "A Farewell to Kings", from 77, is Rush at their most complex, fast, angry and melodic side! For many fans, it's their masterpiece, for me, it's one of their highligths. I'm sure that many consider "A Farewell to Kings" the first album of their best phase, that finishes with the very good synht-dominated "Signals", in 82. In Farewell, the bassist Geddy Lee used the moog synth for the first time, and many 12 string guitars were added to their sound. These intruments gave a new colour to the early Rush sound, and the great live tours since 74 really improved the musicians skills, making "A Farewell to Kings" a delightful Rush album ! The title track is a formidable example of a complex compass and a very rich rhythm section surrounded by a really good fat bass and a marvelous guitar solo. Point for Alex Lifeson, that really evolved his guitar sound since "2112". Xanadu is a classic Rush track. A heavenly atmosphere in the intro, most because of the exotic percussive effects by Neil Peart (bells, chimes, gong...). The rest of the track brings heavy guitar riffs, formidable drumming, moogs and 12 str. guitars !!! Maybe the best track of the album. "Closer to the Heart" is a short and very beautiful track, a little bit pop-oriented , with all charachteristics of 70's Rush sound ("Closer to the Heart" was their first big hit). "Cinderella man" is another complex short song, with that huge rhythm section (that goes breaking everything troughout the album !). "Madrigal" is a soft song, with many acoustic guitars, just to relax the listener to the hard-progressive "Cygnus X-1". This track continuous its history in "Hemispheres", the next album. It's a lenghty track, like "Xanadu", but heavier and faster (Neil Peart really kicks-off !). In summary, get this album, listen to it carefully and enjoy the best phase of this phenomenal band. The next four albums would bring excellent Rush compositions, that differs in texture and composition style, but all still excellent !Free Music Review: Another Great Effort By The Boys From Toronto
Hit: 5 Stars
After the initial success of 2112, Rush took another step forward with A Farewell To Kings. Where 2112 was ambitious and sprawling, Kings is more concise and less gradiose, but still better musically than it's predecessor. You can feel Rush getting more mature, more comfortable with themselves, more cofident to honing their sound. The compositions here have reached a point where their song construction is clever, adept, and precise. The classical guitar on Kings, the intro to Xanadu, the acoustic phrasings of Closer To The Heart. You can feel Rush has evolved.
A Farewell To Kings - I quoted this song in my High School yearbook back in the day. Great tune. Very mature. Alex shines.
Xanadu - Epic! The intro is great with the birds and all the different percussion instruments Neil throws in. One of my personal favorites. Excellent. I scaled the frozen mountaintops of Eastern lands unknown....
Closer To The Heart - A Rush classic along the lines of Spirit Of Radio or Tom Sawyer. Short, sweet and to the point. Perfect.
Cinderella Man - An often overlooked song. Geddy wrote the lyrics to this tune and it works well. Solid.
Madrigal - Probably the weakest song on the album. Not bad, just short and very reflective. Moody. Sounds like side two of 2112 Lessons or Tears. Not filler, just not spectacular Rush.
Cygnus X-1 - The ten and a half minute vastly superior bastard son of The Necromancer. In the last few years Rush has started to perform this song live again. It is a killer tune, just throws me off a little bit with the distorted intro voice that makes me flash back to Caress of Steel. Defiinitely jams.
Overall, you can feel that Rush has reached a point in their career where they actually feel in control of themselves and their music. The polished feel of these songs speaks volumes for them as perfectionists and muscians. One of the string of truly great Rush albums that span from 2112 to Moving Pictures on the older side of the Rush catalog.
Dig it!
Free Music Review: After becoming the epitome of prog, Rush steps back a little
Hit: 5 Stars
Rush has always been a band of albums and not hit singles, so when they became the next big thing in progressive rock with 2112, it was due to the album as a whole (particularly the title suite) not just one solitary song. But I guess Rush must have been a bit worn out from the extravagant "2112" for the follow-up A FAREWELL TO KINGS has them scaling things back a little bit, and not a moment too soon. Because honestly, can someone get more pretentious (I mean good pretentious, not bad) than "2112"? Just about every song on here is worth noting, even if two of them haven't gone on to become major classics like the other four on here. The title track has them again condensing their prog aspirations into a finely-crafted, well-written 5-minute song, and succeeding admirably. Granted, the subject of royalty vs. peasantry is the stuff worthy of a miniseries, but Rush says all that needs to be said, thank Heavens. At the end of "Kings", there's a mention of "Closer To The Heart", a short little 3-minute song that apparently may have been intended as a filler, but instead has gone on to become one of Rush's most popular songs, appearing on all four of the band's live albums. It worked for Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", so there's no reason why it shouldn't with Rush. Geddy Lee has thankfully done more bass-playing than songwriting, but sometimes he can come up with something worthy of Neil Peart, and he does on FAREWELL with "Cinderella Man". Apparently a big movie buff, Lee sets the classic Frank Capra film MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN to music quite successfully, and had it been written back in the 1930s, chances are the song would have found its way into the movie. Excellent work right there, and too bad it remains one of Rush's most unsung works. In the way of epics, they repeate CARESS OF STEEL's method of including two, but while that album took prog rock's tendency for bombast to the nth degree, FAREWELL contains some more modest works like "Xanadu" and "Cygnus X-1". Both of those songs became concert favorites, and work just as well as "2112" did, and in half the time, too. While A FAREWELL TO KINGS wasn't as cinematic as 2112, it showed that Rush could do both large and small works with ease.Free Music Review: The Second Period of Rush
Hit: 5 Stars
"A Farewell to Kings" marks the beginning of what I think of as the "second period of Rush". These periods usually consist of about four albums, followed by a live album. The first period, for example, saw Rush evolve from "a poor man's Led Zeppelin" (not my quote) to masters of the hard rock concept album in "2112", due in no small part to the arrival of drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, who matched and heightened the abilities of bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson.So what changed with "A Farewell to Kings"? Well, the first thing you hear when you play the album is Iberian classical guitar. Acoustic guitar had been visited briefly in "Rivendell" on the "Fly By Night" album, but this was the first time it had actually been used as a major thematic vehicle. Many of the songs on the album have a Quixotic tilt to them, both musically and lyrically. Even "Cygnus X-1", a song about a journey to the black hole, has the voyagers aboard a ship named "Rocinante", which was the name of Don Quixote's horse. It seems that Neil Peart put down Ayn Rand for a second and picked up some Cervantes!
The other major turning point also involves expanded musical horizons. For the first time, Geddy's synthesizers and Neil's myriad percussion are truly integral parts of songs, especially in the 11 minute epic, "Xanadu". There is still a considerable amount of excellent bass, guitar, and drum work out of the trio, but these additions signal a true expansion in the possibilities of Rush. They have matured from the young, intelligent hard rockers of "All the World's a Stage" to a truly inventive set of musicians, ever seeking to push the boundaries of their work.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, there is one hit song on this album: "Closer to the Heart". It is a nice song, and it certainly fits in with the rest of the album. However, the rest of the album holds so much more, and you really owe it to yourself to listen to it all. As Bob and Doug McKenzie would say, "Hit singles are short."