Today (and I mean since TEST FOR ECHO) appears after every tour a new plant that allow fans at home remembering the concerts of her favorites again (or as often as they want) to bring back. Some see it wonâ others welcome this publication strategy. I confess: I belong to the latter. I can finally decide for themselves whether I want to have another live album of Canadians and can afford it. If the quality is as high as Snakes & Arrows Live so I can not get enough of it.
On this double CD Geddy Lee (bass and vocals), Alex Lifeson (guitar) and Neil "The Professor" PEART offer again more than two hours of music as it should be: sophisticated, melodic, captivating - in short: just perfect , The main focus of the last tour was of course on songs from Snakes & Arrows. Of the 13 songs on the album were performed live 9 so that the overlap with other live CDs were reduced to a minimum. Moreover RUSH intervened once more in their inexhaustible source of (almost) forgotten diamonds and conjured up just after the opener LIMELIGHT two long no longer played classics: Digital Man (of the signal) and Entre Nous (from Permanent Waves) from the sleeve. And then come the further course still CIRCUMSTANCES (of HEMISPHERES) and A Passage to Bangkok (time to 2112 included) to. All in all, therefore, 13 pieces that were included on the last live albums and should be in every collection. Moreover, it is at DIGITAL MAN, Entre Nous and CIRCUMSTANCES three pieces that were still present at any official live album from RUSH. That alone is already an incentive to buy.
What always amazes me, how do the three to bring their complex sound on stage (maybe apart from Rush in Rio, where the sound is just at the beginning of the concert was not brilliant). After 30 years together RUSH play so tight that many bands should follow their example. On gags like the last tour (as of the priests of Syrinx Temple at once the pirates of the temple were) this time has been omitted, for sinking the three musicians almost in their own musical cosmos and enjoy high playfulness, skill technical Master Class (PEART on drums and bassist LEE likely among the largest rounders at their respective instruments). But even with the guitar work is striking how ALEX Lifeson manages to weave so many guitar tracks from the studio recording live together, that the difference between studio and live performance is minimal.
How great is this concert? Now so great that the fans (by the way the international abbreviation for the airport of Toronto) still screaming the hell out of them for far more than two hours at the instrumental YYZ classics. And the enthusiasm of the band, the Geddy Lee shows at multiple thanks to the audience is absolutely convincing authentic. Many reviewers to have at Rush in Rio still complained that the fans were too dominant to hear, it is now so that the fans are usually only heard in the breaks or in quiet passages. Nevertheless, the spatial sound of this concert has been very well captured on the two CDs, so you really get the feeling to be there. So it will be exciting to see whether the forthcoming DVD do implement this listening experience in pictures, because in this respect the Canadians with Rush in Rio, R30 and the also excellent DVD package REPLAY X3 have already set some milestones.
With well over two hours of play Snakes & Arrows Live is also advised not too short, such as in the double-CD in the special edition of R30, when several pieces of the concert in Frankfurt just fell away. Still at the forefront of sophisticated rock music - In addition, the CD reflects where find RUSH for more than 30 years in the business again. And so they have set themselves another monument with Snakes & Arrows Live.
