You can get off to a fast start. You can sustain your opener with the main course, not filler. But can you end on a high note? Sometimes I wonder if recording a strong closer is the most difficult thing to pull off when it comes to album rock. When it comes to the cream of the crop in music, I can think of more strong openers than strong closers. Nonetheless, I still have my favorites which I’ll be featuring on Mental Jukebox all month.
I could’ve picked any number of closing tracks from the immense catalog of this progressive and chronically misunderstood Canadian three-piece band. But I chose this one from Power Windows because this is an album that I always felt never got its due. Yes, Alex’s guitars take a bit of a backseat to Geddy’s synth musings. But to write off the album because of that is a grave mistake. These songs collectively are some of Geddy’s best melodies from the eighties. I love just about every one of them, especially “Grand Designs”, “Territories”, “Middletown Dreams” and the last track, “Mystic Rhythms”.
Rush purists might quickly dismiss this track which was also the second single from the album. Peart uses electronic drums here in favor of his “traditional” kit. Far from a banger or even a mid-tempo jam, “Mystic Rhythms” hovers in a slow, mystic haze. But the synthesizers, drums and Lifeson’s guitar riff that transition the song from the chorus into the second verse are some of the band’s best examples of power in restraint. It’s an acquired taste. I think I dismissed it when I first heard it, but it has become one of my favorite Rush anthems in more recent years.
“We sometimes catch a window. A glimpse of what's beyond. Was it just imagination Stringing us along?”