Rush – A Farewell to Kings – MoFi – Hybrid SACD

A multi-part epic that travels to outer space, a tune inspired by a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, a permanent radio favorite, a band embracing art without limitations, and much more: Rush explores thrilling directions on A Farewell to Kings. Making good use of rare down time and favorable studio circumstances, the Canadian trio advances the incorporation of electronic instrumentation into its work and expands its vocabulary on a landmark renowned for adventurousness, musicianship, songwriting, and sonics.

Mastered at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s California studio and housed in mini-LP-style packaging, MoFi’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD presents the group’s platinum-certified 1977 effort in definitive sound on disc. Transparency, dynamics, and presence have tremendous value on A Farewell to Kings, especially given how the album was recorded. Simply consider what Rush captured amid the grounds of Rockfield Studios, located in the Welsh countryside.

The knocking, for example, at the entrance of “Xanadu” stems from the band recording outdoors in the studio’s courtyard, with the sonic properties of the gravel paths and reflections bouncing off buildings preserved. The crisp guitar at the beginning of the title track was also recorded as Alex Lifeson strolled around outside. Chirping birds, witness to Rush’s experimentation, make an appearance on both tracks.

Throughout, A Farewell to Kings teems with nuances that enhance its atmospherics and arrangements. The band later discussed the large role colors, textures, and tones play in songs — and how they contributed to feelings of excitement and freedom that fueled Rush’s ambitions. Those in turn spurred the group to capitalize on possibilities to try different instrumentation, develop unusual time signatures, and construct extremely complex passages. Be it the bass pedals that gave Lifeson license to add a second guitar on “Xanadu” or the open spaces that invited Geddy Lee to adopt the Minimoog, Rockfield’s unique rooms and native surroundings were the ideal places to lay it all down.

You can now hear the results on an album Lee believes holds up as well as any in the Rush catalog like never before. Start with the contributions of drummer Neil Peart. His arsenal on A Farewell to Kings expands to include orchestra bells, tubular bells, temple blocks, wind chimes, a bell tree, glockenspiel, and more. Not to be outdone in terms of their tools, Lee augments his setup with a 12-string guitar and now-signature double-necked models. Lifeson, too, incorporates 12-string guitars of the acoustic and electric variety (including double-necked beasts) as well as a classical guitar and a bass-pedal synth of his own.

All the gear is put in service of songs that veer from short to long, quiet to loud, acoustic to electric, and nearly everything in between. Having bought themselves an indispensable hiatus from a non-stop album-tour-album-tour cycle with the release of the live All the World’s a Stage, Lee, Lifeson, and Peart learned their way around more instruments and honed prior skills with virtuosic intensity. They traveled to a studio outside their Toronto homebase for the first time, embraced the pastoral isolation at Rockfield, and mixed A Farewell to Kings in two weeks at Advision in London.

Incredibly, the album took just three weeks to record. In just over a month, Rush created a breathtaking work that decidedly sees the trio evolving into a group with no immediate peer. The public came to that conclusion shortly after the release of A Farewell to Kings. But engineer Pat Moran already knew it when at Rockfield he watched Rush nail “Xanadu” in one single take. Loosely based on Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” as well as Citizen Kane, the fantasy opus contains one of the most famous back-and-forth interplay exchanges in Rush’s oeuvre.

“Closer to the Heart,” the only song Rush brought to Rockfield in complete form, attained just as much recognition, cracking the Top 40 in Britain and becoming a concert staple for decades. Co-written by Peter Talbot, the concise melodic anthem stands out for representing solutions and hope on a record on which a majority of narratives confront pressing problems. Its nearest cousin on A Farewell to Kings, “Cinderella Man,” draws from the 1936 film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and pits the principled actions of a moral human against a corrupt society.

As if anticipating the future, Rush even provides A Farewell to Kings with a cliffhanger that would resolve on its next LP, Hemispheres. A sci-fi saga in which a curious protagonist voyages to the inner depths of a black hole and pays the ultimate price, the four-part “Cygnus X-1” is sound and fury, Rush barreling headlong into mystery and searching for something more. The journey had only just begun.

Track Listing

A Farewell to Kings
Xanadu
Closer to the Heart
Cinderella Man
Madrigal
Cygnus X-1