Artist: Rush
Label: Mercury Records
Release: 1987
Rating: 5/5
“Hold Your Fire” is the album where Rush hit the peak of their “synth” era sound and songwriting style. The guys kept Peter Collins at the production helm, so the new album holds on to the sound of its predecessor, “Power Windows”. “Hold Your Fire” is the moment in Rush’s career when they got closest to a pop sound in their musical expression, something they kept weaving fashionable trends into all through the eighties, with more or less success. So “Hold Your Fire” is the album where Rush most successfully managed, across the board, to fold the then-modern pop elements into the beat of their own understanding of musical tradition. That’s why this is by no means an album for fans of the band’s “pre-Signals” era sound, though even “Signals” is already pretty far removed from it.
You’re probably curious about the difference between “Power Windows” (1985) and “Hold Your Fire” (1987). The latter strips the songs down to the point where we can conclude that Rush came closest in their songwriting to the standard pop template: pre-chorus plus chorus (twice in a row), plus a middle instrumental section, plus a repeat of the chorus. In other words, this is an album where the songs are trimmed down even further motif-wise, but on the flip side all those motifs are defined and highlighted that much more clearly. If I may go on, it’s one of the most listenable albums in the band’s discography, one of the easiest to get into, and the kind that creeps under your skin quite unconsciously and entirely spontaneously, with no straining and no hunting for ways to “understand” it (which is the biggest nonsense in general anyway). “Hold Your Fire” is an incredibly dynamic album, highly fluid and ever-changing in its motifs and moods.
So Rush simplified their songwriting style a touch more, and the carved-down songs with high-flying choruses are tailored even more closely to the production that the guys liked at the time and that, for them in this period, was a tried-and-tested formula. If “Power Windows” still held on to some bits of experimental tinkering in the middle sections as well as the outros, now that’s gone too, or rather, that factor has been further detailed and polished. That makes the album all the sweeter for undemanding ears, which is to say it’s the most pop-leaning Rush art rock album.
“Hold Your Fire” is also the most positive-minded of all the Rush albums. The lyrics are more personal again. In the verses, Peart seeks, and as far as the poetry goes this is the common thread running through every song, peace with the world, acceptance of the world as it is, a need for spiritual growth and for reaching a higher level of self-knowledge, emotional and spiritual maturity, and that sort of self-reliance and independence. The lyrics on “Hold Your Fire” prove that Rush reached a new, higher level of intellectual maturity in their own expressionism, which, combined with a further dialing down of the band’s manual technical showmanship in favor of a sharper definition of the new album’s excellent, polished melodicism, works triumphantly in every respect and clearly leaves the previous three studio albums behind.
Force Ten, as the opener, defines the look of the whole record. If this song gets into your ear, the whole “Hold Your Fire” record will. It’s a slightly more wound-up tune than is proper for an album opener. With Time Stand Still, though, Rush manage to serve up a song that marks the career moment of the band’s most successful approach to pop eighties rhetoric. It’s a tune that’s perfectly composed, you can’t do better than this, and as such it belongs straight on the radio airwaves. The type of hit you never get tired of listening to. A prototype of a song with the potential for the loveliest evergreen status. The feel for perfect melodicism in the composition is optimally capitalized on once more here and perfectly crowned by Lee’s emotionally sophisticated approach. Mission and Prime Mover also come closest to this song in their own guises. The trio allow themselves a bit more drama in Lock And Key and Turn The Page, while Tai Shan is a successful attempt at blending the Rush sound with a clichéd melody in the spirit of China. High Water at the close, after Tai Shan, confirms the album’s complete wind-down, and in stringing together a rich sonic picture among the basic building blocks of the Rush sound, it feels especially soothing in keeping with tradition and could serve as background sound for various relaxation techniques. In this song, Peart’s drums step further and further to the front, round after round, combined with electronic percussion that grounds the esoteric moment of the song’s melody, created over the (by now well-known) curtain of synthesizers in the background.
The middle instrumental sections of the songs are trimmed down. Mostly we just run into the blending of collages of keyboard synthetics and Lifeson’s extremely detailed, sharp echo-delay tones, which, often hanging off the tremolo arm, build entirely simple motifs that in no way break up the compactness of the lead motifs. Lifeson hitting the frameworks demanded by the guitar’s subordinate position, in terms of production parity with the other instruments. Takes extra effort. It matters where, how and when you place each note. Especially if you’re limited in notes. Minimalism is wisdom, and Lifeson on the synth-era Rush albums, taking this element into account, is by no means a mute bystander his bandmates occasionally use as a treat and a spice, but an important building block of the “eighties” Rush sound. Once again, these moments are ingeniously peppered by Neil Peart’s electronic percussion, which adds that important counterweight, strengthens the atmosphere and builds the songs’ dynamics.
Because the songs are simplified and the basic motifs so clearly emphasized, we get the feeling that the compositions are far more polished and varied than on “Power Windows”, where there weren’t any particular departures between songs. “Hold Your Fire” is the peak of Rush’s “synth eighties” era. After it, the guys started to revitalize the rock positioning of the individual instruments in the production again. Keyboards began to slide into the background, and the guitar went back to “strumming” riffs. “Hold Your Fire” remains the most accomplished Rush “eighties” era album!
Lineup
Geddy Lee – vocals, bass guitar, bass pedals, synthesizers
Alex Lifeson – guitar
Neil Peart – drums, acoustic and electric percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
William Faerey Engineering Brass Band – brass
Andrew Jackman – wind arrangements
Aimee Mann – backing vocals
Steven Margoshes – string arrangements
Andy Richards – keyboards
Production
Peter Collins & Rush
Track list
1. Force Ten (4:31)
2. Time Stand Still (5:08)
3. Open Secrets (5:37)
4. Second Nature (4:36)
5. Prime Mover (5:18)
6. Lock And Key (5:09)
7. Mission (5:15)
8. Turn The Page (4:55)
9. Tai Shan (4:15)
10. High Water (5:33)
Album length: 50.17
