Signals

 

    I said almost none of them were related. One of my friends said I should listen to this and I figured that I could listen to 2112 and this back to back since I was already planning on listening to the former anyway. And speaking of 2112, Signals feels a bit underwhelming since I'm listening to it hot off the heels of it. While 2112 was wild and high energy excitement for the narrative portion with a slow cool down on the b side, Signals is like low energy practically the whole way through with only a few moments of intensity. Every element of the music is the same, but just feels lesser in a way. Lee's vocal work matches that of it in 2112, but is much less energetic and doesn't have nearly as much dynamic impact. And the same can sort of be said about pretty much all the instruments too. They seemed less involved and sort of melded together. It still had a similar sound and was still distinctly Rush, but it was like an AI tried to replicate their music and wasn't able to separate the different aspect of the music. Overall, "lesser" accurately describes the album as a whole, especially in comparison to 2112: it's still the same sound and is still good, but feels like there's just less going on.

    Highlights: Subdivisions, Digital Man, New World Man, Losing It.

Rating: 3/6