Rush Fifty Something Night Three Review: All of ‘Moving Pictures’

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Rush Fifty Something Night Three Review: All of 'Moving Pictures'

Towards of the end of the third show of Rush‘s Fifty Something Tour, the band experienced something nearly unimaginable for one of the most technically proficient and perfectionist acts of the rock era — a full musical train wreck that stopped the overture to “2112” right in its progged-out tracks. But no one actually made an instrumental mistake. Instead, two minutes in, Geddy Lee‘s bass went dead, and he whipped it off his shoulder, heading backstage for a replacement that failed to immediately arrive.

It took his bandmates a while to notice, leading to a brief, fascinating guitar-and-drums-only rendition of the track from Alex Lifeson and new touring drummer Anika Nilles. Finally, Lifeson became aware of the silence of the Geddy and signalled Nilles to stop, which felt a bit like trying to halt a Terminator mid-kill. “We’re going to take a break,” he said, looking genuinely nonplussed. Within seconds, Lee had a new instrument, and the band started again, hitting even harder.

A few hiccups for Rush in their first tour in 52 years without the late Neil Peart would be understandable, but the band’s 70-something co-founders and their new touring drummer are apparently more indefatigable than their own equipment. Here’s a look at a few key moments from Thursday night’s show at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum:

After playing the entirety of the first side of 2112 the night before, Rush brought out all of their most beloved album, 1981’s Moving Pictures, in order, at the beginning of set two. Since they had already played all but one track from Moving Pictures over the first two shows, this meant only one tour debut, an extraordinary rendition of the most sprawling and underrated track on the album, “The Camera Eye.”

In a rare and welcome moment of rearrangement for the band, keyboardist Loren Gold added some lyrical piano to the beginning, before the pulsing synths arrived. Lee once described some of the band’s early work as “soundtracks for movies that don’t exist,” and this performance was a reminder of how well “The Camera Eye” fits into the category. The instrumental passages, with their almost Neu!-like feel, viscerally evoked a sense of movement. Nilles was astonishing on her first-ever live performance of the song, somehow mastering its serpentine intricacies on top of the other 40 or so epics she’s absorbed. Throughout the rest of the album, meanwhile, you could hear her making subtle refinements, including laying back deeper into the groove of “Tom Sawyer.”

Editor’s picks

Aimee Mann came back for a third performance of “Time Stand Still.” Mann only spent a couple days with the band back in 1987 when she sang on the studio version and popped up in the (very Eighties) music video, and then somehow never sang it with them again until this week. With each performance, she seems more and more excited to be onstage with the band, exchanging smiles with Lee and relishing her harmonies with him. The performance of one of Peart’s most personal songs is paired with video from throughout his life, and under the circumstances, hearing his lyrical plea to “freeze this moment a little bit stronger” is unbearably poignant every time.

The band debuted a killer “New World Man” for the first time since 2002. Eighties Rush is a beast of its own, with walls of synths and an evolving approach from Peart, who began to embrace polyrhythms and reggae à la his friend Stewart Copeland. If anything (not to be greedy), this tour could use even more of that sometimes unfairly derided era — “Force Ten” and “The Big Money” would be particularly welcome. But it was a kick to hear Nilles show off her ability to take on every step in Peart’s evolution, seamlessly taking on the track’s radically different feel, without feeling the need to match every hi-hat pattern.

Lee’s voice is holding up. After 11 years off the road, the frontman changed his vocal approach via coaching, somehow shaving decades of wear off his voice. But even Lee himself must have wondered if he could keep it going under actual touring conditions. So far, the answer is yes, and if anything, he’s getting stronger from night to night. On the evening’s second song, “Dreamline,” he went as far as to take the chorus up an octave, just for fun, an unmistakable sign of renewed vocal swagger.