Forty years old, yet still yesterdayfresh. When it was first released in 1981, Rush fans knew eighth album Moving Pictures was special. The previous year’s Permanent Waves took a bold step forward, but its follow-up marked a sea change. Hindsight suggests the perceived epoch-ending Exit… Stage Left double live album came one studio work too late.
Fourth record 2112 will always be the cult favourite, but Moving Pictures is Rush’s masterwork – and their biggest seller. Its seven tracks are so perfectly rendered and sequenced that it plays as a suite. Each track is so good, it’s easier to suggest a weakest than a strongest. But even that’s like deciding which eye to blind. Is it Witch Hunt, or the equally stunning Vital Signs? It certainly isn’t Camera Eye, the epic travelogue of London and New York; the brilliant instrumental YYZ (the code for their home city Toronto’s airport, remember); or the timeless genius of either Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta or Limelight.
The £270 Super Deluxe Edition of (it’s reissued in multiple formats) includes three CDs, one Blu-ray audio disc, and five 180g black vinyl LPs
