Counterparts - Rush (CD 1993)

My first encounter with a Rush fan happened almost eight years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. On the walk home one day, I stopped by the video store and checked for Rush CD's after this guy had advertised them like the second coming. "Could anything be that good?" I thought. And then, there it was, Counterparts. The CD cover looked cool enough, so I parted with seven bucks and continued home with my first Rush CD ever.

At this point in life, my musical vision was still pretty black and white. As far as I could tell, there were basically two kinds of songs -- the good ones and the cool ones. It was pretty simple, the good ones made you feel and the cool ones made you move. To this day I've yet to fully grasp how moving equates to feeling. The sexual implication behind moving just makes it too animalistic and one-night-standy. But that's just weird.

So Neil Peart came along with the opening drum sequence of "Animate" and blew the doors wide open. Was it possible? This song was both good and cool. And I was so not ready. But by the end of the song, I had actually understood it, enjoyed it, moved to it, and felt it. And it was weird. For most people you'd think this would happen with Stevie Wonder or something. The opening melody, with a dominant bass, is definitely one of those nobody could copy without just making the same exact song. The second line of this song, Sensitize me, became one of my favorite lines of all time. If you don't see it, you just don't see it, that's fine. Later in the song, Geddy refers to My counterpart, my foolish heart and delves into a short "sermon" about learning to rule your emotions and not let them rule you. Of course whether you should actually do this, I think depends on the situation. Still, this makes for a scintillating opener.

"Stick It Out" plunges in with a slightly faster speed and offers some of the most killer rock guitars you've ever heard. This "mean" side of Rush also removed its cloak in the rock anthem "Virtuality" which would appear on the subsequent album Test For Echo. Although I had had some experience with the harder side of rock, I had yet to hear anything this raw. Boy, was this stuff relentless. You ain't heard lead guitar until you hear this sh!t. Lyrically, it hints at a humorous side on the band's part -- Spit out your anger, don't swallow your tongue, stick it out, don't swallow the poison, spit it out, don't swallow your pride. I LOVE the way they say the word "poison".

"Cut To The Chase" opens with a spacey melody on the guitars, and a slower but excellent beat. Like that's a surprise. Out of the blue, you get to the lyric Can't stop moving... and the song speeds up slightly, while the instrumentation remains subdued. After he says it three times, the song interrupts him in the middle of it -- Can't stop BLAMMO! Forgive the French, but it's f*cking amazing. Then it continues with a key change and more great lyrical musing. You may be right, it's all a waste of time, I guess that's just a chance I'm prepared to take.

I was still a little unprepared to like this CD on the first listen, but by the time "Nobody's Hero" was over, I knew I had found a treasure. Here we have the first ballad, a very pained melody backed by gorgeous strings. The chorus here is priceless in the way it's presented -- Hero, is the voice of reason against the howling mob, Hero, is the pride of purpose in the unrewarding job, Hero - not the champion player who plays the perfect game, Hero - not the glamour boy who loves to sell his name, Everybody's buying nobody's hero.

"Between The Sun And Moon" has one of the greatest hooks ever kicking off its chorus, and sounds much like a Test For Echo track. Can you imagine a hook so great, you actually feel tempted to sing along to words like "Ahh yes to yes, to ahh, to yes"? "Alien Shore" follows quickly with the strongest rock melody since "Stick It Out". It's got one of those ascending bass jobs going on. For you and me, sex is not a competition, for you and me, sex is not a job description. It sounds oodles better with the music, seriously. I especially love at the end when they change it up and spontaneously throw out the line Reaching for the alien shore, but that's just us. Awesome.

"Speed of Love" is as close to filler as it gets here. Basically a simple guitar lick over a simple mid-tempo beat, with the usual distant darkness around it. However, it does have this line -- Nothing changes faster than the speed of love. "Double Agent" is Rush showing off again, cramming an entire epic rocker into less than five minutes. It even comes with a voice-over! On the edge of sleep, I heard voices behind the door, the known and the nameless, familiar and faceless, my angels and demons at war... Which one will lose depends on what I choose, or maybe which voice I ignore. I absolutely love that last bit.

"Leave That Thing Alone" is one of the coolest instrumentals in existence. It starts out seemingly innocent, right in there with the pop crowd. There is a strange, "crawling" synth effect beneath the mess that contributes greatly to the song's fullness of sound. I always thought that the guitars in the background on "Normal Town" by Better Than Ezra sounded almost exactly like this song, but this thing morphs around more often than the background color of a Charlie Brown movie.

The fastest, most aggressive song of all of them is placed surprisingly deep in the mix, at the 10th slot out of 11 tracks. "Cold Fire" grows monotonous fairly quickly, but it's fun to listen to the drums on the chorus (How does he do that!?!?) I also love this little exchange -- I said if love has these conditions, I don't understand these songs of love, she said this is not a love song, this isn't fantasyland.

Finishing off is "Everyday Glory", the kind of track that nearly forces you to visualize the band standing on clouds, playing this one from the sun-drenched paradise of Heaven. It's basically about as close to a pop song as you'll get here, but it is one of the finest pop songs I've ever heard. It has some of that epic quality too. So I'll just toss a lyric from the bridge (oh, how hard it is to choose) and be done with it.

If the future's looking dark
We're the ones who have to shine
When there's no one in control
We're the ones who draw the line
Though we live in trying times,
We're the ones who have to try
Though we know that time has wings
We're the ones who have to fly

Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder must have never been fond of his music. I find that the more time I spend with an album, the more fond I grow of it. If this is not a five-star album, I don't know what is. After eight years, it still gets me.