POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rush Lights Up the Stage Visually, but Not Sonically

Here it comes again, drum-sets spinning and lasers spurting. . . . A Wednesday night with Rush, the Canadian band with the most loyal fans in the world. Rush filled the Forum for two nights running, has been going like gangbusters after 18 years and is the last refuge of those ‘70s-type guys who still see drony rock ‘n’ roll as high art.

Rush, like Nirvana, has three members, comes from a Northern clime, has a stance outside the mainstream and lyrics that elude linear sense, and have influenced (or been influenced by) Soundgarden.

Plus, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson looks a little like Nirvana guitarist Kurt Cobain if you squint a little, and Lifeson undoubtedly knows more chords. If you can get past the dull bits, Rush has some shreddin’ riffs, too, and a melody or two that seem to have been imprinted on your brain forever. And it’s almost certain that the band’s extra-musical level of taste and refinement is as great as that of any group around--the photography, concert-lighting and animation featured at a Rush show are always exquisite.

But when the musical highlight of a two-hour set comes in the drum solo, a powerfully propulsive tribal groove from Neil Peart that wavers between a sort of Michelob Dry commercial tribal thing and something that sounds like supercharged Scottish regimental drumming, anybody less than a Rush devotee may be in for a slow night. Wednesday, Rush had all the spontaneity of Tony Bennett, without much of the charm.

Singer-bassist Geddy Lee, a slip of a man in granny glasses and a peculiar checkered sport coat, has a nasal tenor something like a passionless John Lennon, only transposed up half an octave, and has an odd habit of e- nun -ci-at-ing every word as if he were playing to an etiquette class instead of a hard-rock crowd. And he duckwalked better than Chuck Berry--better, because he looked more like a duck.

At one point in the set, drapery on the backdrop lifted to reveal a proscenium arch painted to look like hundreds and hundreds of dice--about 560 dice, all threes, if you were bored enough with the music to count them--presumably a reference to their current album, “Roll the Bones.” But hey--it’s not like Rush isn’t hip or anything. There was even a rap break in one of their newer songs, performed by a cartoon, Mohawk-coiffed skeleton projected onto a rear screen.