Rush, ‘Shifting Photos’ (Fortieth Anniversary Version)’: Album Evaluate

For rabid prog-rock followers, no archival oddity is value leaving within the mud. The unhealthy information: Rush have at all times been a tidy bunch, by no means accumulating a lot of a scrap pile.

“There’s nothing there. There’s nothing left,” Geddy Lee advised Rolling Stone in 2021, confirming the trio’s lack of leftovers. “There may be half-finished demos someplace the place we bought midway via and went, ‘Oh, this music sucks.’ And it by no means bought made.”

It is an admirable philosophy: If Rush have recorded any junk over 40-plus years, they’ve intentionally stored it buried. Why waste individuals’s time with 5 barely totally different variations of “Tom Sawyer” when the unique is true there, nonetheless able to be savored? However we dwell in an age when no band’s archives keep sacrosanct for too lengthy, when each arbitrary year-marker is an excuse for one more reissue. Rush’s consistency is, in a way, a double-edged sword.

Shifting Photos is already essentially the most important Rush album, their most natural mix of ’70s-style prog virtuosity (instrumental monster “YYZ”) and ’80s new wave punch (hooky price-of-fame sing-along “Limelight”). The set’s Fortieth Anniversary Version does not change that verdict: With out an engineering diploma, 99 p.c of followers will not have the ability to detect a lot distinction within the new remaster — that’s, exterior of the occasional element that will simply be a placebo impact. (Is Neil Peart‘s triangle extra pronounced in the course of the intro of “YYZ,” swirling across the audio system? You be the choose.) In brief: It sounds good, similar to earlier than.

The Tremendous Deluxe Version is stacked with the requisite superficial goodies (intensive liner notes, lavish field, a number of audio codecs on Blu-ray) aimed on the nerdiest amongst us. However the crux of this package deal is a rattling, beforehand unreleased 1981 dwell album, captured in Toronto and unfold throughout two discs. It captures an unvarnished, warts-and-all aesthetic, all jagged edges in distinction to the principle LP’s easy contours.

It is at all times fascinating to listen to Rush go ragged, with Lee straining to hit the excessive refrain of “Limelight” or the total band failing to know a strong tempo on the soft-to-soaring “Nearer to the Coronary heart.” And several other of those dwell tracks are virtually punishing of their depth: Peart’s ringing toms in the course of the big-band jazz part of “La Villa Strangiato,” the dynamic shift into onerous rock on “Pure Science,” the heavy reggae switch-up on “Working Man” amid the multi-track medley.

For die-hards starved for swag, this Fortieth-anniversary set is value investigating. However some might selfishly want Rush had been a bit sloppier again within the day — the band’s acquire in high quality was our (future) loss in amount.