Rush
Vapor Trails
»
Rush
Vapor Trails
Anthem/Atlantic, 2002
RiYL: You either love ‘em or hate ‘em. |
It’s a shame this band polarizes people so easily, because Vapor Trails is arguably Rush’s best album in two decades. That it was even made is a testament to music’s ability to guide people through their darkest hours. In this case, it was the deaths of drummer/lyricist Neil Peart’s wife and daughter within a 10-month period. Peart didn’t pick up a drumstick for two years, instead, he set off on a 50,000-mile motorcycle trip, not knowing for sure if he’d ever return (an experience chronicled in the song “Ghost Rider” and in his upcoming book of the same name).
Eventually, the drummer, Lee, and guitarist Alex Lifeson got to work on new material, shaped alternately by Peart’s experiences and a refreshingly stripped down approach to the accompanying music. Indeed, while some of Rush’s recent forays into experimentation (the rap on 1991’s “Roll The Bones,” the Soundgarden-style dropped-D assault of 1993’s “Stick It Out”) seemed more motivated by contemporary trends, the banishment of synthesizers and slick production here seems genuinely employed as a means to a better product.
All that’s left, then, is guitar, bass, and drums, and the sound is nothing less than huge. The empty spaces are colored by ingenious overdubs, and the willingness to tone everything down results in some of the group’s least hokey material in ages (“How It Is,” “Sweet Miracle,” “Ghost Rider”). You want rock? You’d be hard-pressed to find more straight-ahead riff salvation than on the amazing “Ceiling Unlimited,” “Nocturne,” “Secret Touch,” or “Peaceable Kingdom,” which would be right at home on either of the last two Sunny Day Real Estate records. Lee does climb the high register more than on recent efforts, but his multi-tracked harmonies and wordless intonations are utilized to good effect on a number of cuts, including “Vapor Trail.”
As a wordsmith, Peart still has his sore spots, be it overstating the obvious (the anti-violence rumination “Peaceable Kingdom”) or getting a little too flowery when describing seemingly mundane events (“the city crouches, steaming in the early morning half-light / the sun is still a rumor, and the night is still a threat” - from “Freeze”). But a number of songs are surprisingly frank, underlying the album with tangible emotion. The narrator of “How It Is” struggles to reconcile reality with loftier ideals, while the subject of “The Stars Look Down” seeks ammunition against caving into the crushing randomness of fate.
It’s packed with the traits that have long since drawn a dividing line between fan and foe, but in this there is no shame: Vapor Trails is a great, straight-forward hard rock album from a band that actually seems to be getting better as it ages. Would you really want anything else?
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"