Vapor Trails
	Produced by Rush and Paul Northfield
	Released on May 14, 2002
	US CHART POSITION #6
	Find it at GEMM
83531-2 cover [high resolution scan]

S ome reviews take a longer road than others. In this case, the trail starts with Gerald Walker, who sent me this disc in the mail. For free. (If I ever have a hall of fame, he’s in it.) So did I rush out to review it? Nah, because my mind works like some distorted game of dominoes. Then another reader (Ted Hagelman this time) wondered why I hadn’t reviewed Vapor Trails. “Because I’m the laziest creature on earth,” I chirped, embarrassed to admit that the magic Rush glyph hadn’t popped up yet in the game. It was the chirping that did it, I think, because when I went out to get the mail yesterday a hawk came flying out of the sky, grabbed me by the skull and, beak to nose, said in a high threatening voice: “Review Vapor Trails or I’m gonna claw your friggin’ eyes out!” Which isn’t technically a domino, but the hawk’s still out there and I need my mail, so here we are. I’ve listened to Vapor Trails about seven times so far, and I like it more every time I hear it. Telling you that it rocks, that it’s their best album since (fill in the blank), that it’s a seventy-three on a scale of one to hundred (thank you, Megacritic, for nuthin) won’t get the hawk from gently rapping at my door. So I’ll tell you what Vapor Trails really is: a homecoming. Their first album sounded like a young Led Zeppelin, Vapor Trails sounds like a mature Led Zeppelin. Not what the later work of Robert Plant or Jimmy Page sounded like, but what you’d expect from a Kashmir all grown up. And like a Kashmir, Vapor Trails is a beautiful black obelisk of rock or metal or some dark star collapsed. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no weak spots or a single point of interest I would point you toward. I haven’t heard a Rush album this consistent and contiguous since, well, we’re falling on old ways again aren’t we? I would say it exists out of the constellation proper, a last planet found in a lazy orbit at the edge of the solar system that caught us by surprise. Between the helium Rush! and the black, dense Vapor Trails, it’s been one hell of a ride. I’ll likely linger here for some time, pick over the rhythms and riffs for signs of an ancient civilization and then go back to gazing at the nightsky, waiting for another wonder to emerge.

83531-2 lyric sleeve	83531-2 back sleeve

TRACK LISTING

1. ONE LITTLE VICTORY
2. CEILING UNLIMITED
3. GHOST RIDER
4. PEACEABLE KINGDOM
5. THE STARS LOOK DOWN
6. HOW IT IS
7. VAPOR TRAIL
8. SECRET TOUCH
9. EARTHSHINE
10. SWEET MIRACLE
11. NOCTURNE
12. FREEZE (PART IV OF "FEAR")
13. OUT OF THE CRADLE
    
    Music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, lyrics by Neil Peart

CREDITS

GEDDY LEE -- bass guitar, vocals, engineer
ALEX LIFESON -- electric and acoustic guitars, mandola, engineer
NEIL PEART -- drums and cymbals
Paul Northfield -- engineer
David Leonard -- mixing
Hugh Syme -- art direction, paintings and portraits

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