Wild Kinetic Dreams: Rush’s Power Windows at 40

But Rush fans should know what they’re getting into. For years, the band pursued their creative instincts over everything else. To be a Rush fan is to be along for the ride. A Zeppelin-loving Clevelander who discovered the band’s first radio hit “Working Man” was likely shocked by their subsequent 20-minute odysseys about Greek gods. But that doesn’t make one the “better” or “worse” version of Rush. It’s the same mental block for those fans who resist their so-called “synth period.” You can dislike a Rush album because it’s not your taste; you can’t dislike a Rush album because it doesn’t sound like Rush.

Power Windows, the band’s eleventh album, is the apex of this period of their career. It’s the pinnacle of an era that Tom Commerford would not like and that would not elicit air-drum solos or spit-filled bass-lick imitations from Paul Rudd and Jason Siegel in I Love You, Man. It is perhaps the only album in Rush’s discography of nineteen LPs that could be described as “sparkly.” In his biography of the band Contents Under Pressure, journalist Martin Popoff describes the fan reaction to Power Windows as “particularly guarded, many finding the album too high-tech.” Even now, the album is excluded from the classic Rush canon, their stretch of albums from 1976’s 2112 through 1982’s Signals. (Rush, if you’re reading this, there are dozens of us who want more 40th anniversary box sets!)

And yet, Power Windows is still chock-full of catchy guitar melodies, complex rhythms, and measured, bookish lyrics. Power Windows is just as Rush as their signature albums. It’s the sound of a band still fueled by curiosity, even eleven releases in. They’re interested in what they can do with their instruments, how they can push themselves further as songwriters, and what the new technologies of the digital age can offer them. They name their mission statement on Power Windows’s second track, “Grand Designs”: “Against the run of the mill / Static as it seems / We break the surface tension / With our wild, kinetic dreams.” It’s not just the purpose of Power Windows; it’s an apt description for all nineteen of the band’s albums. It’s the ethos of what makes Rush Rush.

Power Windows followed a particularly tumultuous period for the trio. After Signals, they parted ways with producer Terry Brown, who had worked on all of their records since 1975. “We just thought we were at a point in our relationship where we felt we knew each other too well, there was nothing new happening,” Lifeson said of the split in 1984. Eager to learn from new voices in the studio, the band hired Steve Lillywhite, who’d produced Peter Gabriel’s Melt, U2’s first three records, and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ debut by then. But at the very last minute, Lillywhite canceled, leaving Rush afloat. After pressing Lifeson on the Lillywhite burn, Kerrang wrote in a 1984 interview: “At this point Alex lapses into a lengthy silence, as if to infer that, in the final analysis, Lillywhite didn’t feel it’d do his New Wave ‘credibility’ any good to become involved with a bunch of ‘hippies’ like Rush.”

The result was Grace Under Pressure, co-produced by Peter Henderson (Supertramp, King Crimson), in 1984. The entire record-making process was one of the most difficult Rush ever experienced, defined by frustration, bleak news reports, and impending deadlines. You can hear it: Grace Under Pressure is as icy as its cover; its guitars snarl rather than glow like they did on Moving Pictures and Signals. The keyboards blare under the chorus of “Distant Early Warning,” and the sharp synths on “Between The Wheels” are downright anxiety-inducing.

With Power Windows, the band could finally take their time and do the synth thing right—and with the right people. In just the first ten seconds of the album, the results are obvious: Power Windows sounds enormous. The first note on opener “The Big Money” has a valid claim as the single loudest moment in their discography: a monstrous hit of guitar, bass, and drums, smothered in reverb to make it smack like a lightning strike. The synthesizers on Signals were fuzzy; on Grace Under Pressure they were steely. On Power Windows, they’re vivid and textured, like the horn-like blasts on “Mystic Rhythms” or the laser-focused beams on “Grand Designs.” The keys in the final chorus of “Marathon” hang in the mix like echoes in a cathedral. There is no other Rush album this expansive and grand.

Power Windows has a go-big-or-go-home approach. For years, Rush worried that using sequencers, synthesizers, and other digital tools during the recording process would hinder their ability to play the songs live. The band, after all, takes pride in its status as a trio, both on stage and off it. “We decided not to hold anything back,” Lee said in 1985. “We wanted to develop the songs to their fullest, so for the first time we just said, ‘Let’s make the record and worry about the live show later.’” This shift in recording ethos came from Peter Collins’s influence. The English producer, brought in to helm the recording of Power Windows, had no reservations about the purity of Rush as a trio. With Collins behind the boards, Rush added instrumentation that would’ve seemed unfathomable five years prior. There’s a choir on “Marathon” and a string section on “Manhattan Project.” Andy Richards, who played keys on “Careless Whisper,” recorded the album’s keyboards, forming an unappreciated link between Rush and George Michael.

As synthesizers filled up the mid-range of Rush’s sound in the 1980s, Lifeson struggled to find his place in the increasingly dense mix . The guitar was too understated on Signals and too heavy on Grace Under Pressure. Power Windows is the goldilocks. Even with all those keyboards, the album is a showcase of Lifeson’s versatility, his brightness centered in riffage on “The Big Money.” He’s textural on “Territories,” threading the needle between synth lines. He’s atmospheric, his chords adding bite to the chorus of “Middletown Dreams.” Just as Peart adopted an electric drum-kit and Lee tinkered with Yamahas and Rolands, Lifeson experimented with the fashionable trends of the era, pulling from the choppy, rhythmic guitar of the Police’s Andy Summers and the washed-out pedal effects of The Edge, but he still retains his musical identity.

If it seems like Rush “went pop,” they didn’t. This is not their Big Generator. For all of Power Windows’s bold melodies and modern production, it’s still a Rush album: complicated, unpredictable, and lovably nerdy. If A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres pushed the band’s technical skills as instrumentalists to the brink, Power Windows does the same for their skills as arrangers. There’s no multi-parted epics here, but every song achieves that same sense of scale. For an album invigorated by contemporary, polished production, Power Windows still feels proggy. Despite some style missteps and landing a couple of videos on MTV, Rush never bent the knee to the pop machinations of the 1980s. On Power Windows, the era bent the knee to them, providing new fuel for the band’s creative engine.

Power Windows is the farthest Geddy, Alex, and Neil ever got from their beginnings. The Rush of Power Windows is a far cry from the humble trio playing Zeppelin rip-offs. And yet, the album is a representation of the band’s continuity, not their change: their commitment to integrity, their intellectual perspective on music-making, and their unparalleled ability to craft songs that keep fans air-drumming, air-guitar-ing, air-bass-ing, and even air-keyboard-ing forty years later. That is the real, and the only, Rush formula. And that’s what’s made this band so magnetizing for over fifty years. They’re adding even more dates to their recently announced tour, due to demand from fans. Wild kinetic dreams will get you that far.

Andy Steiner is a writer and musician. When he’s not reviewing albums, you can find him collecting ‘80s Rush merchandise. Follow him on Twitter.