★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Kurt Loder said it best: if you're a Rush fan, you'll like this, and if you don't, it won't exactly endear you to the band. I like Rush — a bit — and I was quite overwhelmed. (But he's right; reading all the online worshippers at the feet of the Unblemished Neil, rating every song on this album five out of five, gives you a sense of how lockstep the fanbase is.) Anyway, yeah, it's a Rush album with a lot of synths (it was the '80s and glossy production was the cutting edge) and off-putting lyrics about the apocalypse, angst ridden robots, and concentration camps. "The Body Electric" is narrated by a robot; it has the rousing, relatable chorus of "one zero zero one zero zero one, S.O.S." So obviously these tracks touch the kind of universal chord that all humanity can enjoy, and that makes the Rush audience so diverse. People and color, women, and people all over the spectrum love their Rush! I kid. I kid. As "Red Lenses" says, "could we talk about something else instead?" Sigh; I miss the frantic yowl of Fly by Night Geddy Lee. Favorite tracks? *shrugs, points unenthusiastically* "The Enemy Within," "Distant Early Warning."
