Review Summary: Like Alan Alda in the later seasons of M*A*S*H, Geddy Lee takes on three important jobs for which he has varying degrees of talent and uses them to shape the tone of the final product.
Hold Your Fire is overall a superb album with tight songwriting, intelligent lyricism, and exceptional performances by Geddy Lee and Neil Peart. It also has glaring flaws though, and for an album whose sound many people liken to 80’s pop,
Hold Your Fire can be surprisingly impenetrable.
Unsurprisingly, one of those flaws is the elephant in the room: Geddy’s synthesizers have overtaken Alex Lifeson’s guitars. The problem is not a sonic one though, because the keyboards themselves are incorporated fairly well into the compositions. The real problem here is that whereas Geddy is playing bass, keyboards, and singing while Neil is playing the drums and writing the lyrics, Alex’s contributions boil down to playing chords. He’ll shake it up every now and then by playing arpeggiated chords, but very little of what he plays is memorable. For a formerly guitar-driven band, there are very few leads that he plays here, and his lack of a presence can be (and has been) disconcerting to Rush fans trying to get into this album.
Geddy and Neil aren’t without their own faults, and theirs’ are the ones that make the album a more challenging listen. To provide a little background: Neil Peart stated in an interview that the overarching theme of
Hold Your Fire was instinct. There's nothing wrong with that, and for the most part, it makes for astute songs like “Lock And Key,” which deals with the more brutish aspects of human nature and how we repress our more violent urges in an attempt to live in a humane society. Unfortunately, Neil also tends to be on-the-nose as a lyricist, and his metaphors (like those on the aforementioned “Lock And Key”) are pretty obvious. As a result, it can feel like he’s teaching these ideas to us rather than artistically representing them in a more engaging way. At numerous points in the album, this disconnected me from the music because there was very little for me to get emotionally attached to amidst what felt like a musical lecture (I call this the “2nd Law: Unsustainable” Effect).
What doesn’t help is Geddy’s singing, although I do feel bad for listing that as a complaint. The fact is though, he just doesn’t sing with much inflection or dynamic range on
Hold Your Fire. He’s serviceable in the sense that he sings melodically and in-tune, but there’s a mellow, almost robotic quality to his singing here that doesn’t reflect much investment or interest on his part, particularly on the songs “Second Nature” and album-closer “High Water.” I don’t know if I should pin this on Geddy spreading himself thin between three instruments or Neil’s lyrics not being the most engaging, but Neil’s and Geddy’s respective shortcomings, when combined, hold the album back from being a classic.
That’s not to say that these flaws are present on every song on the album. In fact, the impressions that album openers “Force Ten” and “Time Stands Still” leave don’t hint at these issues at all: Geddy sings more passionately, Neil’s lyrics are more relatable and engaging, and Alex Lifeson plays several great leads that are incorporated well with the synths. As far as album openers go, the one-two punch of “Force Ten” and “Time Stands Still” is even better than “Tom Sawyer” and “Red Barchetta” for sheer emotional impact and craftsmanship.
While no other song on the album ever matches these two highlights, the rest of
Hold Your Fire still holds up well. As stated before, Geddy’s keyboards are expertly incorporated and make for some breathtakingly beautiful moments like in the final chorus of “Force Ten” or in the end of “Mission.” Beyond the second verse of “Force Ten,” there’s not a lot of technical keyboard work, and that translates into a positive aspect of the album: the synthesizers are used to build atmosphere and add texture to the songs, and they do that job well. The lack of technical keyboard work also keeps the focus on the rest of the rhythm section and Neil’s lyrics, both of which are still exceptional in spite of my misgivings about the latter.
I wouldn’t say that herein lies Geddy’s or Neil’s best instrumental work, but for a Rush album that focuses more on the ideas at play and the subtleties of the compositions, their efforts go a long way towards keeping the music interesting. While there’s a definite imbalance in the band members’ contributions to the record, the songs themselves are intelligently arranged and masterfully performed. The only real exception to this is “Second Nature,” which meanders for several minutes without building to anything particularly substantial.
Hold Your Fire is above all else a fascinating record that provides some insight into the band’s state of mind during the late 80’s. As the culmination of a musical experimentation with synthesizers which really took off with
Signals, it surprised me just how well the band was able to take elements of 80’s pop and make it sound distinctly like Rush. It’s got a lot of replay value for people who like picking up subtle touches in their music, and even if the presentation falters on occasion and you find yourself missing Alex Lifeson’s lead guitar work, I still highly recommend
Hold Your Fire to fans who like to take their prog rock with an especially rich atmosphere.
Recommended Songs:
"Force Ten"
"Time Stands Still"
"Turn The Page"
Skip-Worthy:
"Second Nature"
Special Commendation:
"Mission," whose intro reminds me of Roger Waters's work on
The Final Cut, for some reason...
