Clockwork Angels

"Clockwork Angels" is the title track from Rush's 19th studio album, the Canadian trio's debut set for Anthem/Roadrunner Records. The conceptual record was recorded at Blackbird Studio in Nashville and Revolution Recording in Toronto. The storyline traces a young man's journey through a world of steampunk and alchemy and an unyielding Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.

Speaking with Spin magazine, Rush bassist Geddy Lee explained how the band approached the project. "I didn't want the details of the story to start weighing down the individuality of any one song. I wanted the songs to be a collection that could stand on their own, outside of context of the whole story," he said. "When you look at a collection of songs like those on the Who's Tommy, you could pull 'I'm Free' out of that and it still stands on its own. But in connection to the story, it takes on another interpretation. So there was a lot of discussion about that. I think at one point, Neil (Peart, drummer-lyricist) was a little frustrated with my determination to keep the story-line minimal in a sense."

Producer Nick Raskulinecz told MusicRadar.com that every track on Clockwork Angels was born out of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson jam. "Geddy and Alex would sit in a room and jam with a click track or a simple drum beat," he recalled. The songs were very different without Neil. So that was the first stage of the demos; the next demo stage was to get Neil on the songs." "Songs constantly changed," he continued. "Half of the album was written between 2008 and 2010. The second half was written in two weeks in the studio. While Neil and I were tracking drums on some of the finished songs, Geddy and Alex were down the hall working on the other ones."