Rush Retrospective: Album 14- Roll the Bones

 

Album:  Roll the Bones

Year Released:   1991

Lineup:  

• Alex Lifeson – electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals
• Neil Peart – drums, cymbals
• Geddy Lee – bass guitar, vocals, synthesizers

Overall Thoughts:

I wasn't expecting to like this album as much as I did.

I thought it was a good album, with some excellent songs ("Bravado" and "Ghost of a Chance" really stand out).  But I wasn't expecting Roll the Bones to be a top tier Rush album- not when I was listening to it in the 1990s.

But in the 1990s I was a young man in my 20s.  Listening to it thirty years later gives a whole new perspective.  This is an album for the middle-aged.

The songs, throughout the album, are from the perspective of someone who has scars from life.  It's not an angry album, or a sad one.  Mainly, the songs are from someone who is just weary of the struggle of life.  Everything else has failed- why not try being kind to each other?"

It's some of Neil Peart's strongest lyrics.  Look at "Bravado":

And if the music stops

There's only the sound of the rain

All the hope and glory

All the sacrifice in vain

And if love remains

Though everything is lost

We will pay the price

But we will not count the cost

Or from "Ghost of a Chance":

I don't believe in destiny

Or the guiding hand of fate

I don't believe in forever

Or love as a mystical state

I don't believe in the stars or the planets

Or angels watching from above

But I believe there's a ghost of a chance

We can find someone to love

And make it last

The man who wrote "2112" was trying to take on the World.  Twenty years later, that same person is looking back on their life- not with regret, but exhaustion.  As someone who is 52, this album speaks to me.

Musically, Roll the Bones is outstanding.  Like Presto, they've merged the synthesizers so they play Robin to the guitars and drum.  By this point, they've been playing together for two decades, and that experience shows.

It's a great album.  It's also an album that grows as the listener ages.

Ranking of Rush Albums (adding as more albums are reviewed):

1. Presto
2. Moving Pictures
3. Roll the Bones
4. 2112
5. Permanent Waves
6. Fly By Night
7. Rush
8. A Farewell to Kings
9. Hemispheres
10. Hold Your Fire
11. Power Windows
12. Signals
13. Caress of Steel
14. Grace Under Pressure

Top 10 Rush Songs (adding as more albums are reviewed):

1. "The Pass", Presto
2. "Tom Sawyer", Moving Pictures
3. "Working Man", Rush
4. "Closer to the Heart", A Farewell to Kings
5. "La Villa Strangiato", Hemispheres
6. "Freewill", Permanent Waves
7. "Bravado", Roll the Bones
8. "2112", 2112
9. "Fly By Night", Fly By Night
10. "Show Don't Tell", Presto