Why do artists remix albums from their back catalog? The cynic in me says it’s a cash grab. The fan in me says it’s because the artist wants to give listeners a glimpse of the road not taken. Rush is a band unafraid to do both — and I get it. Being in a band is a business. It’s how they make their money, but it’s also their career, their vocation, their passion.
When Rush hired Dave Bottrill in 2013 to remix Vapor Trails, they did so because the original release was, let’s face it, a hot mess when mastered. To briefly rehash just how disappointed fans were: Rush, a group known for its meticulous dedication to the recording process, had released a record that — as I put it in a Popdose Roundtable with Dw Dunphy, Chris Holmes, and David Medsker — “sounded crappy.”
Bottrill’s remix revealed much of what had been buried in the mastering. And since I enjoy quoting myself, here’s what I noted in that same discussion:
The remix has done more than lower the volume. David Bottrill has moved some elements around, brought the vocals to the front of the mix with better EQ, and even switched up vocal takes to add more dimension to the songs. He’s also brought a crispness to the drums that was missing and layered Alex’s guitar parts in a more even-handed way. There’s a lot on this remix that was simply absent from the original recording — it made me realize how many layers of music and vocals were buried under a really bad mastering job.
With Rush’s tenth studio album, Grace Under Pressure, the problem wasn’t bad mastering so much as bad luck. Wanting their sound to evolve, Rush parted ways with long-time producer Terry Brown — sometimes called the fourth member of the band — and set their sights on riding the New Wave. That ride was to be piloted by Steve Lillywhite, who said yes to producing the record, then said no when Simple Minds came calling for Sparkle in the Rain. The band then pitched Trevor Horn and Chris Squire of Yes, but ultimately landed with Peter Henderson — no slouch, but hardly a New Wave figure. Henderson was more recording engineer than a producer, offering little in the way of creative feedback or direction. The result was an album that sounded thin, with lyrics that probably should have been reconsidered (I see red / And it hurts my head / I guess it must be something that I read). What the actual fuck? Whatever internal quality control existed at the time waved “Red Lenses” through.
Flash-forward 42 years, and Grace Under Pressure gets the remix treatment from none other than Terry Brown — the very producer who was let go before the album got underway. That irony alone makes this a fascinating artifact, and to me, it represents the road not taken in its most literal form.
A bit of context is useful here: by this stage of their career, Rush had entered what fans often call the “synth years,” a period in which Geddy Lee’s enthusiasm for keyboards gradually pushed guitarist Alex Lifeson into the margins. There are moments on the original recordings where one might wonder whether Alex was even in the room. Brown’s remix makes it abundantly clear that Lifeson was not only present but contributed a wealth of muscular, textured sounds that had simply been pushed down to let Lee’s synth experiments dominate. Fans can now A/B these songs on streaming and hear the difference for themselves.
Overall, I really like what Terry Brown has done here. Not everything lands perfectly, but much of it reflects the same magic he worked during the band’s classic era: separating the instruments so each one breathes, applying a more dynamic EQ to the drums so they stop sounding so thin, bringing up the bass and guitar, and pushing the synths back to a supporting role rather than a starring one. He also lets “The Enemy Within” end cold rather than fading out, which is a welcome choice. Certain vocal phrases and ad-libs pop with a clarity they never had before. Will most casual listeners notice the difference? Probably not. Will Rush fans? Absolutely — and they’re the intended audience.
Grace Under Pressure was likely the most difficult record Rush had made up to that point (later, Vapor Trails would claim that distinction), and the strain shows in its sequencing. The album came out in the LP era, when frontloading the stronger material on Side 1 was standard practice, and Rush followed the playbook. “Distant Early Warning,” “Afterimage,” “Red Sector A,” and “The Enemy Within” arrive in succession and make a compelling case for the album’s strengths. Side 2 is where things get dicey. “The Body Electric” has its moments, but it’s a song about a robot — and one has to wonder whether Rush had learned nothing from Styx’s Kilroy Was Here and rock audiences. “Kid Gloves” fares slightly better. “Red Lenses” is unintentionally comic, and the underappreciated “Between the Wheels” are examples of the lack of Grade AA Rush cuts. Indeed, the songs on Side 2 are more reflective of how difficult this record was to make for the band.
Had the band not let Terry Brown go in ’83, I think Grace Under Pressure had the potential to be a genuinely solid Rush album. There’s no way to know whether Brown would have pushed them to retool Side 2 into something stronger — but listening to his remix suggests he would have steered the band toward a middle ground: somewhere between the de rigueur production sheen of Trevor Horn and Brown’s own aesthetic of clarity, separation, and heaviness.
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