So much style without substance
So much stuff without style
It's hard to recognize the real thing
It comes along once in a while
I’m pleased to report that after a day and a half of sad sacking it, I’m feeling much better—not 100%, but I doubt that’s even an achievable goal anymore with two young kids at home.
Anyway, “Grand Designs.” I have such a strange relationship with this song. On some days, I love it. On others, it grates like nails on a chalkboard.
So on the one hand, “Grand Designs” sounds quintessentially Rush: arresting pop-synth riffs; a haunting guitar solo; drums so complex and precise they sound like machines.
On the other hand, the music itself sounds kinda recycled, doesn’t it? In the melody, I hear shades of “Red Barchetta” (specifically those guitar notes when the music stops after the line “a lot of useless talk”). Even Alex’s guitar solo sounds like it was patched together from B-sides of Moving Pictures.
Lyrically, “Grand Designs” is essentially a condemnation of style without substance… except to me, that’s exactly what this song sounds like: the Rush style without any of the substance that makes the band so great. The lyrics are fine, I guess. But the instrumentation could be a lot better.
You might disagree—I hope you do!—but to me, “Grand Designs” feels like what might result if you asked ChatGPT to write you a Rush song.
Yeah, after the reverb-drowned Grace Under Pressure, the band lost their way. When this album came it I really wanted to like it, but like, WTF.
I'm glad you're feeling better, Lara.
I do disagree, but not as much as I'd like to. I hadn't noticed the shades of "Red Barchetta" that you pointed out, and now that I have, I wonder why I never noticed it before. I wish the synths were toned down so we could hear more of what Geddy's doing on the bass.
Lyrically, the song starts out kind of weakly for me, but it gets stronger. There are lots of great lines here—"life in two dimensions is a mass production scheme"; "some world views are spacious, and some are merely spaced"—and yet they don't build as well as they could. To my ear, the rhyming scheme is a big part of the problem.