Six years after their previous studio album, 1996’s Test For Echo, Rush returned to the frontlines with a new album. Vapor Trails, their 17th studio album released in 2002, found the band stripping away the excessive arrangements of the past, abandoning the synths and inflated embellishments in favor of a more back-to-basics approach. Playing-wise, they never sounded tighter while drummer Neil Peart’s lyrics seemed to resonate at a time while personal life mired in quiet turmoil. It was nothing the band was about to capitalize on, though it subconsciously added to the urgency and unsullied performances that fill the disc. If Vapor Trails proved anything, it was that Rush was a group of exquisite musicians and consummate professionals who weren’t about to let their stock deplete during a long and wistful wait.
Beginning with “One Little Victory,” it’s clear the three hadn’t lost their touch when it comes to their interactive, hardline attack. Peart pounds out a steady and rhythmical stream of rolls while guitarist Alex Lifeson and vocalist and bassist Geddy Lee fall into the trenches and explode out of the gate. Lifeson then greases up and flexes his muscles for a double layer of six-string histrionics for such fodder as “Ceiling Unlimited,” “Secret Touch,” “Earthshine” and “Nocturne.” The guitarist successfully embosses the record with more texturing over soloing that gives the whole piece a more unified sound. As evidenced with tunes like “Ghost Rider,” “How It Is,” “Out Of The Cradle” and the title track, Lee’s inexorable bass lines massage each and every corner while his vocals — repeatedly double-tracked — ease into one register to the next without submitting to the grating highs of the distant past.
After losing a daughter in a car accident in 1997, then his wife to cancer in 1997, you’d think that Neil Peart would have written lyrics poised with introspection and sadness. Unlike John Lennon or Roger Waters, Peart has never been one to imbue his personal tribulations into his words (perhaps due, in part, to the fact that he doesn’t sing). Instead, the drummer drew much of his inspiration from a vast selection of books. His appetite for the writings of Ayn Rand and her philosophies of objectivism was widely publicized. On Vapor Trails, Peart mixes it up and relies on a variety subjects and issues, most notably the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on “Peaceable Kingdom.” Lines such as, “All this time we’re shuffling and laying out all our cards, While a billion other dealers are slipping past our guards” echo the call to arms that electrified the nation. The rendering of The Tower tarot card that accompanies the lyric inside the CD booklet does little to trivialize the events. Elsewhere, Peart depends on Walt Whitman for “Out Of The Cradle,” Thomas Wolfe for “How It Is,” Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, and a variety of others for lyrical ideas. With each member fulfilling his role to the utmost, Rush sounded as effervescent at the turn of the century as they did in the 1970s. To that end, Vapor Trails reaffirmed that the rest of the music community still had a lot of catching up to do.
~ Shawn Perry
