Released: 1977
Tracks: A Farewell to Kings; Xanadu; Closer to the Heart; Cinderella Man; Madrigal; Cygnus X-1
Best track: Xanadu
Tracks to skip: Cinderella Man & Madrigal
Wow. It never really hit me until listening to this for the purposes of this review, but whatever hit Rush in between 2112 and this was huge. They literally went through a major transformation. I’ve mentioned it a few times in the previous Rush reviews, but this album is where they really start to get good. This album is far from perfect, or their best, but it’s nearly all excellent. So yeah, I uh *kinda* recommend this.
Rush started to point in the direction of ‘prog rock’ on 2112 but they got it all wrong and made a piece of crap. Here on Farewell to Kings they got it right. The big influence for the band now became Yes (instead of Led Zep) and it made them a lot better. First, the confidence in their playing has grown considerably in a year. The other main growth area was a huge leap forward in songwriting and coming up with some ballsy material. I’m not saying that this stuff had never been attempted, because it had, but for Rush it was a huge leap forward. Musically, all three really just stepped it up on here.
Xanadu is so damn good. Still one of my favorite Rush songs and I love listening to it. It’s a fantastic composition and they are so fearless on it! Cygnus is also a great song, but there’s that one section (starting with “I set a course just east of Lyra…”) that really sucks. The rest of the song is incredible, but that one little section is such a bad rehash of all the awful stuff Rush did on their first 4 albums. Besides the horribly cheesy keyboards, the other bad parts to the album are the songs Cinderella Man and Madrigal. Yup, they’re filler. The lyrics to these are very dumb and they’re cheesy songs as well. For the middle section of Cinderella Man, they actually do a little cool bit where they play an exact replica of Afro Pop. I don’t know if they possibly heard some, or just were experimenting around, but it’s pretty startling and very cool. And then they screw it up by going back into the crappy song. I’m of the opinion that those two songs just suck. However, besides those two fillers, the rest of Farewell to Kings rocks. The other 4 songs are so strong that it still gets a good grade. This album is utterly essential for Xanadu and Cygnus.
Rating: 92
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