Rush
R30

THE REVIEW

This is yet another testament and live celebration of the Canadian triptych now reaching 30 years of career. You'd expect a reviewer bored by yet another release of this kind, which you see abundantly in all genres, but a new Rush album is always "a new Rush album" and deserves a thorough review.

Here boredom and predictability are not at home and make way for admiration and amazement in seeing three gentlemen on the verge of 60 delivering 3 hours of high-level music without dropping in performance but above all always with great acoustic, visual, and emotional impact! I imagine that various references to "Rush in Rio" are obviously obligatory, especially due to the temporal proximity of the two releases. In reality, such a comparison now seems very risky to me simply because of divergent intents. "Rush in Rio" wanted to be the memory of a show where the relationship with the audience was a fundamental part of the spectacle, and the priority was given precisely to the audience, the spectacularity of the footage, and the "impact" of the pieces. This was to the detriment of some important elements for us rush-maniacs, namely the accuracy and sound definition of the instruments and the focused shots on the singles' performance.

"R30" is set, I prayed for weeks that this could be the case, as a supplement to the forgivable flaws of "Rush in Rio". Here we find power and extreme sound definition for every instrument; here we find footage focused on the executive details, excellent bonus tracks consisting of the entire second dvd. A live extremely educational and that we fans were waiting for. So is everyone happy? Yes, if you have "Rush in Rio" in your video library to complete the circle. Almost everyone, if you accept the little audience participation and if you accept a less juicy setlist than the very long original tour tracklist. The setlist discussion is also extremely influenced by the previous dvd; only the pieces already proposed are cut, but allow me to highlight that being disappointed by this tracklist is absurd. It is about two hours of great music full of true gems like "Subdivisions," "Red Barchetta," "Mystic Rhythms," and "Between the Wheels," not to mention the already legendary intro! The audio quality is decidedly high, and I only listened to it in pcm from a personal computer with poor headphones! Every instrument and frequency is extremely distinguishable in the mix, which is excellent, and power is certainly not lacking!

If we want to nitpick, I find Geddy's voice a bit distant from the rest at times due to a reverb that is often a bit too generous. But it's just a personal opinion! Good video quality, there are fewer cameras compared to "Rush in Rio" but the direction is superb and manages to keep the vision always fluid while often focusing. I REPEAT: "R30" is an extremely educational dvd; it could easily have been titled "vivisection of a live performance" even if the term is in poor taste. Watching it means attending a music lesson; the teacher is the very history of rock in the last 30 years. A new masterpiece without a doubt then, testimony to the great success that this band is still gathering 30 years after the beginning of its activity. Let's hope all this bodes well in anticipation of a new full-length!