Hemispheres

The opening song will wrap itself around you. The more you listen, the more nuances are revealed. It's OUT THERE, yet beautifully played. The lyrics are icing on the cake.

La Villa Strangiato is still a concert staple to this day. It's a sweeping, jaw-dropping instrumental.

Circumstances is a plaintive song about fate, reflecting the thoughts of drummer Neil Peart when he was on his own in London, 18 years old, just starting out.

The Trees is a timeless, whimsical jam, played with terrific power, featuring almost silly lyrics about a battle between the Oaks and the Maples. Great word play here by Peart. Almost silly because the song actually works on quite a few levels. Lots of fun symbolism.

How many rock bands regularly place those kind of songs on albums? Irreverent, goofy rockers, flights of fancy? Not many.

Hemispheres is a scorcher for the ages.


One of the best art rock masterpieces   May 14, 2004
Terrence J. Reardon (South Carolina and Mass., USA)
Rush's seventh album Hemispheres was released in October, 1978. The album is the third jewel in Rush's 1970s art rock crown. I first discovered this album on cassette in late August of 1990 and was my most played album in my first three months of freshman year of high school. This album is still great, even today. Hemispheres was recorded between June and August of 1978 at Rockfield Studios in Wales and Advision Studios in London with the band and Terry Brown once again producing. The album kicks off with the 18 minute second part to the previous album, 1977's A Farewell To Kings' concluding track Cygnus X-1(Book One: The Voyage) entitled Cygnus X-1(Book Two: Hemispheres) and is about the division of the brain and has the heart and mind struggling with one another with Cygnus being the bringer of Balance. The music of bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson was arguably on top of its game and drummer Neil Peart's lyrics are top-notch on Hemispheres. The piece is incredible and the musicianship is fantastic. Side two kicked off with Circumstances which was a nice short below 4 minute rocker with Geddy singing in more of a lower register on the verses and his then-trademark high pitched vocal in the chorus and featured excellent synthesizer work from Geddy as well(Hemispheres was the first album that Geddy used a polyphonic synthesizer which played whole chords unlike the Moog used on A Farewell to Kings which was monophonic). Next is The Trees which is still a concert favorite 25 years later and an excellent song and starts as an acoustic number then goes into full throttle hard rock. The album finishes with the nine and a half minute La Villa Strangiato which is arguably the band's best instrumental. The song was recently played on their Vapor Trails tour and Alex Lifeson would add a different hilarious speech before the song goes into the end of the track(when I saw Rush play in July, 2002 in Boston, Alex's rant was about quitting smoking and he started to smoke socks) and was the highlight of each show. This album still sounds great for a 25-year old album, especially with the remastering Bob Ludwig did on this and all of the Mercury/PolyGram efforts. Also, you get all the original artwork that came with the album and the poster(in CD size) with the band on stage that came with this album originally. I demand you buy Hemispheres.