Clockwork Dreams

You don't get to be known as the biggest cult band in the world without giving your fans what they want, a philosophy that Rush takes to heart on its live albums. On Clockwork Angels Tour, the legendary Canadian band doesn't just give fans a live version of its latest album, but a full-featured live experience. Over the course of the three-disc set, fans are given the royal treatment, with an album packed with new songs performed with a string ensemble, classics like "Subdivisions," "YYZ," and "Spirit of Radio," an encore featuring "Tom Sawyer" and "2112," three drum solos, and a soundcheck recording of "Limelight." With a few flubbed notes and vocal missteps sprinkled throughout the set, it's clear that the band's age is starting to show a little…

Clockwork Angels has been a long time coming. Rush foreshadowed it in 2010 by releasing "BU2B," and "Caravan" to radio. The next single, "Headlong Flight," didn't appear until 2012. Co-produced with Nick Raskulinecz (who also worked on 2007's Snakes & Arrows), Clockwork Angels is a return to the concept album by the band that perfected it on 2112 in 1976. It centers on a loose narrative about a young man following his dreams. He struggles with inner and outer forces of order and chaos; he encounters an expansive world where colors, images, territories, and characters are embodied by pirates, strange carnivals, rabble-rousing anarchists, and lost cities. His enemy is the Watchmaker, a ruthless authoritarian presence who attempts to rule the universe and all aspects of everyday life with fascistic precision. Neil Peart's lyrics embrace notions of alchemy and steampunk sci-fi in his thematics…

Airships and electric submarines, automatons and mesmerists?welcome to the wild world of steampunk. It is all speculative?or is it? Meet the intrepid souls who pushed Victorian technology to its limits and paved the way for our present age. …

Recorded at about the same time as "Monkinus", the album by the same duo released on CIMP, the album is as good without adding too much. "Blue Monk", "Brilliant Corners", "Ruby, My Dear", "Epistrophy", "Criss Cross", "Evidence", "Monk's Dream", "Bye-ya", "Off Minor" figure on both albums…