Snakes & Arrows

Untitled

Snakes & Arrows is the eighteenth full-length studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush. It is currently set to be released on May 1 2007.

Promotion and release

On March 12, 2007, the band unveiled a new website at their official web location, primarily to promote the album. The first single from the album, "Far Cry", was posted as on-demand streaming audio on this site. At the same time, the band announced on the newly designed website that the single was being released to North American radio stations, to be played on the air as of that date.

Writing and production

File:Lee studio.jpg

Geddy Lee in the studio recording the album.

Writing for Snakes & Arrows began in January 2006 with bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson working at their home studio in Toronto. The pair began the writing process by casually jamming, gradually molding their ideas into completed pieces. During this process, drummer Neil Peart wrote preliminary lyrics for the songs – a creative method the band has employed frequently on their prior original recorded works.

Peart, originally a native of the Toronto area, has lived in Southern California since 2000. To continue working with his bandmates for the new album, he commuted to Ontario and New York throughout the writing and recording phases of the album. For the times during the album's production when Peart was in California, some collaboration was done over the Internet.

In March 2006, rough versions of six songs had been completed. The three band members joined together in Quebec to listen to the material recorded thus far. Pleased by what they heard, they refined the songs in May 2006 in a small professional studio in Toronto. Once the recording of the first six songs was completed, the band set out to write and record additional songs to follow in September.

American producer Nick Raskulinecz, famous for his previous work with the Foo Fighters, was hired to assist the band members in producing the album. Raskulinecz, a self-proclaimed fan of the band, reportedly encouraged Lee, Lifeson, and Peart to explore the limits of their renowned talents, and enthusiastically encouraged the band to incorporate the complex rhythmic and melodic patterns that characterized their earlier works. As for the engineering of the album, Raskulinecz made use of vintage microphones for several applications.

The final mix of the album was recorded at Allaire Studios, in Shokan, New York, and mixed by Richard Chycki at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles, and engineered by Richard Chycki. It was mastered by Brian Gardner.

Thematic elements

Peart, the band's primary lyricist, has stated the lyrical theme of the album will be based on his personal reflections on faith, inspired by his many motorcycle journeys through North America.

Sound and musical direction

According to Lifeson, musical themes for the album were written and developed using acoustic guitars to work out the major parts. These parts would ultimately be recorded using acoustic or electric guitars, or other instruments. Lifeson found that writing the songs on acoustic guitars provided a certain purity, assisting him in conceiving the various instrumental parts. Both he and Lee used this as an alternative to more traditional methods of song development, which saw the use of amplified electric guitars and the assistance of electronic instruments.

According to Lee:

It's hard to describe. It's big, it's bold, and I think it's some of the best work we've done in years. I'm really pleased with the quality of the songs, and there's lots of playing on it... Playing those songs [from Feedback] that we loved and grew up on, I think it helped us remember how sometimes it's the simplicity or the directness of an arrangement that really makes a great song. And the other thing is, we played all together in the studio for a lot of the Feedback stuff. That's something that a lot of producers had been pushing us to do for a while but which we hadn't done in years. It was great to turn off the click and just play — you know, not worry so much about being so, quote, metronomic — and that definitely carried over into this record. – Geddy Lee, interview with Revolver Magazine.

According to Raskulinecz, the album has a similar sound to Rush's albums of the late 70s, such as 2112, A Farewell to Kings, and Hemispheres.

DVD-Album Format

Snakes & Arrows will be one of the first albums released on Warner Music's new "DVD-Album" format. This format will be a 25,000 copy limited edition. The album will come in a deluxe box, and will include the 13 songs on the album in hi-resolution audio, the entire album in 5.1 surround sound, a video documentary on the making of the album, and a special 26-page booklet. The tenative release date is set at June, 5 2007

Track listing

On March 8, 2007, the track listing for Snakes & Arrows was released as follows.

1. "Far Cry" - 5:21
2. "Armor and Sword" - 6:36
3. "Workin' Them Angels" - 4:47
4. "The Larger Bowl (A Pantoum)" - 4:07
5. "Spindrift" - 5:24
6. "The Main Monkey Business" - 6:01
7. "The Way The Wind Blows" - 6:28
8. "Hope" - 2:02
9. "Faithless" - 5:31
10. "Bravest Face" - 5:12
11. "Good News First" - 4:51
12. "Malignant Narcissism" - 2:17
13. "We Hold On" - 4:13

Multiple instrumental tracks

In a first for Rush, this album contains multiple new instrumental tracks: "The Main Monkey Business", "Hope", and "Malignant Narcissism". This also marks the first new instrumental piece(s) composed by the band since "Limbo", on 1996's Test for Echo.

"The Main Monkey Business" will be the second-longest instrumental on a Rush studio album, second only to "La Villa Strangiato."

Singles

Cover	Information
File:Far Cry.jpg	"Far Cry" Released: March 13, 2007 Written by: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, & Neil Peart Produced by: Rush & Nick Raskulinecz Chart positions: No.22 Mainstream Rock Tracks

Reviews

On March 23, 2007, UK music journalist Dave Ling posted a review of the album on his blog after attending a private listening for the British press hosted by Pegi Cecconi, a representative of the band.

I'd been dying to hear it (...) This time the band have gone heavier (very heavy in places!), with guitarist Alex Lifeson being let off the leash. (...) 'Spindrift', for instance, uses pounding instrumental parts to re-create waves crashing in on the western shore. 'The Larger Bowl (A Pantoum)', meanwhile, picks up where the 'Hemispheres'-era track 'Circumstances' left off with its couplet of: "Some of us live in a cloud of fear/Some live behind iron gates". In the vaguest possible way, Rush also pay lip service to the differences between the Middle East and Middle West in 'The Way The Wind Blows', which features the telling line of "Pray... and pass the ammunition" and a great solo from Lifeson. The best compliment that you could pay Peart's words is that they're thoughtful without being stuffy. The album, too, is heavy, but falls short of being one dimensional. You're gonna like it, I'm sure.

— Dave Ling, [1]

Three days later, Get Ready to ROCK! reviewer Pete Feenstra posted a more detailed review of Snakes & Arrows written after he evidently attended a playback of the album at Atlantic Records HQ in Kensington.

An excerpt:

Nothing concentrates the mind better than having to review a new Rush album after just one solitary play. And after this playback at Atlantic Records HQ in Kensington I was left breathless, if not stunned by the sheer power of an album that stylistically throws in the proverbial kitchen sink. I suppose after such an enduring and varied musical career, it's not surprising that Rush have gone back to their Proggy musical roots. And with former Foo Fighters Alex Raskulinecz at the controls, the band are given a free reign to indulge their musical excesses, as they stretch out and jam in a post Zeppelin heavy duty deluge that manifests itself in a stunning wall of sound.

— Pete Feenstra, [2]