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After just a few months came the first 51 seconds of “Subdivisions” — Rush’s own astonishing riposte to the New Wave. A lone synthesizer pulses (in 7/8) for a few seconds and then Neil comes in: no further description is possible or necessary. The passage would make a career calling card for any drummer, but what was novel was the upside-down structure of the song, with Alex Lifeson’s guitar showing up late and then carrying the rhythm (beautifully, if you take the trouble to pick him out) while the drums truly lead the way. This is rare, outside of a drum-solo setting, for any rock drummer not named Moon or Bonham.

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It was as if Rush, until then a very loud group fuelled by metaphors of battle, had made a conscious decision to cool down and give the spotlight to its ultimate weapon. Very well, the start of Signals announced, this is the age of the synthesizer and we’re going along with it — but let’s see you S.O.B.s synthesize Neil Peart.

Not coincidentally, Peart’s lyrics for “Subdivisions” also took an artistic step: they shake free of the SF/fantasy tropes and the 1930s poetic conceits he had mostly hidden behind until then. Heard in 2020, the song drags the mind of the listener helplessly back to the moment when “Subdivisions” was on the radio, yet seems to have been written for us to hear now. “Some will sell their dreams for small desires,” Peart warned in a mood of cranky prophecy, “or lose the race to rats …”.

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When Arcade Fire released their magisterial LP The Suburbs (2010), it was treated by several different critics as one long Talmudic response to “Subdivisions.” I’m sure that group is tired of hearing about this theory, especially if it is true, but it goes to show the deep impression that the original track made. Neil Peart’s disconsolate protest against confining “geometric order” and conformity strikes as hard today as ever.

Geometric order seems like a funny thing for a drummer to resent, but that is the essence of the great drummers: if they’re really good they can, despite their humble tools and their timekeeping duties, make us feel excitement as profound as any singer. But maybe that sentence shouldn’t be written in the present tense now.

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