One of the most misunderstood bands in rock, Rush are still associated largely with the screechy vocals and excessive concept-rock of their early days. In fact, the Canadian trio began outgrowing that approach after their first half-dozen albums, and have slowly progressed to a song-based format that combines dazzling playing with an ever-increasing grasp of melody and nuance. Instead of clinging to their musical adolescence, Rush is one of the very few '70s bands who've gotten consistently better over the years.

This isn't to say that Rush's early albums weren't period pieces at best. On its 1973 debut Rush was a truly unspectacular Led Zeppelin soundalike; the weighty, mythological lyrics provided by drummer Neil Peart (who joined for the second album, Fly By Night, in Rush's only personnel change) didn't help. The Zeppelinesque approach reached its peak on 1976's 2112, a concept album beloved by deep-thinking high-schoolers everywhere. But Rush were one of the few old-guard bands who took a hint from new wave and sounded better for it; their 1979 album Permanent Waves showed the Police's influence, and the following year's Moving Pictures--which included the hit "Tom Sawyer"--showed a willingness to strip things down, for Peart to write on a more down-to-earth level, and for Geddy Lee to stop screeching and start singing. Tellingly, they'd never record another song longer than six minutes.

It's been uphill from there, and Rush can now call itself a thinker's hard-rock band without embarrassment. The songwriting took a quantum leap on 1984's Grace Under Pressure, which introduced electronics to their formerly guitar-based sound; its lead-off track, "Distant Early Warning," showed they'd gotten familiar with depth and subtlety. By the time of 1989's Presto, they'd taken on a textured pop sound in the same general territory as Adrian Belew's work outside King Crimson. They've stayed there ever since, with Peart's lyrics expressing a convincingly humanist point of view (especially after the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter, which led to a six-year recording hiatus between 1996's Test For Echo and 2002's Vapor Trails), and Lee's vocals having a regular-guy appeal that would have been unthinkable in the old days. And by the way, guitarist Alex Lifeson is a powerhouse.

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