Caress of Steel

Caress of Steel is an ambitious third album on which Rush steps much further from blues-based hard rock and pushes long suite construction and fantastical narrative to the front. Alex Lifeson’s guitar moves freely between sharp riffs and spatial phrases, and Geddy Lee’s bass and voice and Neil Peart’s complex drums powerfully widen the songs’ grand development. From the sharp opening of “Bastille Day,” the comical “I Think I’m Going Bald,” the nostalgic “Lakeside Park” and the narrative of the epic “The Necromancer” to the large flow of “The Fountain of Lamneth,” a suite taking up half the album, it clearly shows the band’s inexhaustible ambition. Though it struggled commercially, including its rough parts, it is an extremely important record on which Rush began in earnest to seek its own scale and musical world. At the end of this experiment awaits the great leap of the next 2112. As a sure starting point for Rush as a progressive-rock band, it is an ambitious work.