Test For Echo
Released Atlantic/Anthem, 10 September, 1996.
- Test For Echo (5:56)
- Driven (4:27)
- Half The World (3:43)
- The Color Of Right (4:49)
- Time And Motion (5:01)
- Totem (4:58)
- Dog Years (4:55)
- Virtuality (5:44)
- Resist (4:24)
- Limbo (instrumental) (5:29)
- Carve Away The Stone (4:05)
Produced by Peter Collins and Rush.
Lyrics by Peart, except lyrics to ‘Test For Echo’ by Peart/Dubois.
The spaces in-between: so much had happened in the period between ‘Counterparts’ and this album, it was time to find out if there was anyone still out there. The album opens with the title track, a frenetic, reverb-laden attempt to generate a response from the void. While there remains a solid coherence between the trio, there are understandable symptoms of gaps appearing between the main characters.
The threesome returned to the studio through choice, but conceding there was insufficient reason for any one band member to break off with the other two, and it shows. Some musical parts don’t fit quite as well together, the lyrics sometimes have to stretch to fit the music. The traditional themes are there – the itinerant warriors are revisited in ‘Driven’, this traveller’s tale suggesting a never- ending journey, being continued because of a lack of other options.
Neil’s anti-Internet diatribe ‘Virtuality’ harks back to both ‘Grace Under Pressure’ and ‘Counterparts’, asking how relationships are going to pan out in this global, virtual village, and ‘Half the World’ returns to the theme of group behaviour.
The literature of psychology is revisited with ‘Totem’, a cleverly crafted cornucopia of musical textures based on a book Neil found on the Chalet Studio bookracks, ‘Totem and Taboo’ by Sigmund Freud. “I had been kind of rediscovering Freud by way of Jung and getting to understand the really deep stuff he was dealing with, as opposed to some of the pop psychology that we were fed growing up,” he remarked. ‘Resist’ was originally to be called ‘Taboo’, following on from Freud’s themes. “I wanted to have the two little set pieces of what we fear,” said Neil. Parts 4 and 5, perhaps… there is no such literary inspiration for ‘Dog Years’ however, for better or worse, but it does have humour, as does the mostly instrumental ‘Limbo’, which was written towards the end of the sessions as a collection of musical snippets, and borrowed words from the Bobby Pickett and The Crypt Kickers hit, ‘Monster Mash’.
Musically the album is harsh and impenetrable, an edge of burnished metal honed by wilderness rock. Overall it is thrusting, in your face, a barrage of sounds and textures that has been carefully designed to make your ears bleed. All the same it allows space for some more traditional riffing, as we discover with songs such as ‘The Color of Right’. ‘Carve Away The Stone’ offers a final respite, slowing the pace all the while keeping up the intensity. Got an echo? You bet your life.