Geddy Lee
MY FAVOURITE HEADACHE
(Atlantic)
Pavement's Stephen
Malkmus was behind the times when he asked, "What about the voice of Geddy Lee
-- how did it get up so high?" As any Rush fan knows, Lee developed a deeper
register years ago, just as Rush stopped writing sci-fi epics and started
delivering more-concise, melody-driven songs. The band have been sidelined for
three years (they're set to return to the studio in 2001), but singer/bassist
Lee has done what amounts to the next Rush album on his own. Even though this
is his lyric-writing debut (usually drummer Neil Peart's department), he makes
no attempt to break away from the familiar format. The tunes are right up
Rush's catchy-yet-complicated alley: ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron apes
Peart's style (though he's not quite as deft with the polyrhythms), and Ben
Mink, usually k.d. lang's collaborator, plays the kind of parts Alex Lifeson
would (though Mink does them on violin as well as guitar).
The resemblance is fine, because Rush were close to a peak when they took their
break. The title track is typical of what they were coming up with --
alternating funky, Primus-like verses with a pretty bridge and prog-rock
instrumental flourishes, it's three good songs rolled into one. Elsewhere, Lee
keeps things more basic. "Runaway Train" and "The Present Tense" offer a
thinking person's version of power-trio rock. Only "The Angel's Share," which
uses Mink's strings for psychedelic effect, goes into non-Rush territory. This
outfit can't play its way around a dodgy song as well as Rush can, so nothing
much happens when Lee doesn't come up with a hook. But his average is high, and
fans will be glad to know that his lyrics include the same kind of five-dollar
rhymes ("nihilistic" with "realistic") and philosophical musings that Peart's
do.
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