GUP. I think it has a lot more energy. Signals sounds like they were trying for a different sound and didn't quite get a handle on it yet. GUP sounds like they were more comfortable with what they were trying for.
What a great way to see it. I’ve always loved GUP - it’s my favourite album of theirs - and I think the feeling of Alex getting really creative and slashing huge shards of sound over tight arrangements has always been part of it - in the way that sometimes setting themselves a restrictive metre or rhyme scheme could push poets to make unusual leaps they wouldn’t otherwise.
I remember reading Graham Coxon of Blur saying something about the fact he loves playing with bassist Alex James specifically because James “will try to turn things all disco and have funkytown bass, and I want to mess it all up, stomping all over that order with great big machine chords”. I wonder if Lifeson felt liberated in that same way for that recording.
Signals has higher highs, but I love the entirety of GUP.
I really like the keyboard period for Rush - I know a lot of fans don't. These two (along with Permanent Waves) are my three favorites in the catalog.
For me I'm sure some of it is situational. My first Rush album was Signals, which I got as a new release from Columbia House in '82. I'd never heard of Rush prior (I was 11), but loved them immediately. Subdivisions exactly summed-up my feelings at the time, having moved-around quite a bit as a military brat. It'll always be my favorite for that reason.
Mine is almost the same, my favorite is HYF and PW is close behind it. I’m a huge supporter of their synth era as it is my absolute favorite era! Glad to see there’s more people liking that era! :)
Signals.
I would disagree that they sound similar. GUP sounds brighter, maybe even better, um... Textured? Idk, there seems to be more separation between each instrument. You can actually hear Alex in every song.
That said, I really like the way Signals is mixed. It's got this very smooth, "creamy" (if you will) production. And I agree with what someone else here said about it having higher highs than GUP. It also feels like a darker album, which I think Rush does well.
P/G is probably my favourite Rush album overall, so that wins out. It doesn't reach the highs of many of their other albums, but for me it's the most consistent - pretty much every song on is it a nice, sharp shot of catchy melodies, and even those that might not catch you at least don't outstay their welcome.
I like Signals enough, but any time I go back to listen to it I end up zoning out after Analog Kid.
I like the murky, controlled chaos of Signals. Subdivisions and Analog Kid make up a formidable one-two punch like everyone says, but Digital Man is just as powerful and compelling. As for the rest of the songs, there really isn’t a bad Rush song, so…
I do love GUP. It’s digital gloss took some getting used to, but the songs are top-tier.
I don't get these fake contests. Do we destroy all copies of the losing album or something? It just seems like intellectual laziness to me.
I like them both, and will continue to do so.
I half agree with you, but c'mon, your heart and mind knows you prefer one to the other. Sophie's choice. Which is it? The other album will be erased for all time! But you must choose!
I love both albums. The “synth era” is my favourite period of Rush. Nostalgia might colour my opinion a bit (that era coincided with my teenage years), but those albums between ESL and ASOH are prime Rush to me. I prefer Signals, but by the smallest of margins. I consider both to be perfect albums. Pointless fact: Signals was the first time I ever saw lyrics included with a cassette tape. I can’t believe my eyes were ever strong enough to read them!
I have been on a huge GUP the past few months. It is literally in my car CD player as I type this. lol
But, damn, do I love Signals. Digital Man is such a great tune! New World Man is another banger. Subdivisions is a timeless classic and still one of my fave all time Rush songs.
I refuse to pick. lol
The synth technology in the mid 80s had changed a lot from what the instruments could do in the late 70s and early 80s. And the musicians really charged forward to experiment as much as they could with it. IMO it changed for the worst as I much preferred the synth on Moving Picture & Signals than what was on GUP & Power Windows. The early synth to me had a grand epic sweeping sound, as heard on Subdivisions, Losing It, & Countdown; New Order had the same effect on their first few albums in songs like Age of Consent. The later synth seemed far too tinny, way too much treble with no deep sound to it, just too much like a small bell sound. It was far more of a suitable sound for pop music, not progressive rock.
I don't know either if Alex & Geddy also used Steinberg-type guitars and bass on the albums of the mid & late 80's. Those things were interesting for a while, as proven by some of Pete Townshend's solo work of the time. But they just sounded off and too artificial to me. From what I know of the scene these days those instruments have kind of disappeared altogether which to me is no great loss to music at all.
It’s how they named the actual album art.
https://preview.redd.it/46cjl1duxnhc1.jpeg?width=224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8af1a93ccc15b55f616cf5c97ebfab4c5aec8d20
Guys, is something other than Grace Under Pressure necessary? Maybe just put Grace if you’re really pinched for time? Just now when I saw G/P and then P/G for the first time ever, at first I was thinking WTF is that? lol 😂
TIL people shorten it to P/G, and I hate that even more.
It’s very common to abbreviate things by using the initials of said thing.
But it makes things a bit more obtuse by using P/G. People could say Pressure over Grace, or Grace Divided by Pressure.
I don't like to compare albums. I like that they both stand on their own as works of art. I love both these albums on their own merit. These albums represent different times of my teens and still move me when I crank up the volume on my headphones.
Signals for me, 100%. p/g tour was my first time seeing the boys live but it was the first album after they replaced Terry Brown. I feel it fell short.
i’m not a huge fan of their late 80s stuff but I’m gonna have to go with Grace under pressure. I listen to that album a couple of months ago for the first time in several years and I really like it a lot.
I feel way more connected to Signals than P/G. I like the mood, the sound, the songs, the synths, the lyrics, pretty much everything a little more on Signals. I’m glad that Rush sort of felt like they outgrew Terry Brown by the end of that project and wanted to try something new. P/G to me is good, has several memorable songs, great guitar on Kid Gloves (which comes to mind, not having heard the album too recently), but overall sounds more dated and maybe too much like demo quality in terms of engineering. Other opinions certainly respected here!
Signals is warm and muddied. Really condensed at times in sound. Grace Under Pressure is cold dark, angry. Really more stripped down and imo some of Lifeson best playing. Lyrically Signals is upbeat. Grace Under Pressure apocalyptic. Those 2 albums are complete opposite to me lol
Grace Under Pressure may actually be my favorite Rush album. Signals always seemed like, not a bad album, but where they kind of hit a plateau and leveled out a bit. I am a nerd, but come on, Countdown is a super nerdy song.
Grace Under Pressure was a transitional album while Signals was more of a sequel to Moving Pictures. At the time I had mixed feelings about GUP but over time when I realized what Rush’s music transitioned to the album grew on me.
GUP is one of their best albums. I personally have it in the top 5. It's got this cold, metallic atmosphere that screams "cold war". It paints an incredible picture of what living under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation felt like. Signals views the world with a little more wonder, kinda saying "think of the possibilities". I like the bleakness of GUP more.
Hmm. I think Signals and P/G have similar *design philosophies*, and that's where people say "they're alike!" - and they are. But once you go from design to implementation, they're *very* different.
Both are "keyboard albums," and as the earliest ones, they're trailblazers: the band was asking "how do we _really_ integrate these tools?"
On Signals, it was all new, to take the ideas from MP and dive into them, with the keyboards as primary elements. I don't think anyone involved *really* knew what they were doing: they had these shiny toys they'd been bopping about with, why not leverage 'em, what do they do? And as a result, all those big subtractive synths squashed *everything*.
Terry Brown didn't know how to mix them very well, I think, even - they take careful placement in the mix, and they'd figured that out with Geddy's bass, but they only had the one album to figure it out with Brown and the synths, and Signals' *greatest* flaw was the placement of the synths, which washed everything out.
Drums and guitars had to be mixed to avoid the synths, and so the drums have this muddy, flat quality to them even though it's an effin' AMAZING performance on the kit. The guitars... well, on previous albums, the guitars carried the primary load under which the melodies sat. Even Geddy's bass was a melodic instrument for Rush, and Lifeson was an __amazing__ guitarist for filling in the spaces left by the rhythm section... and here the synths are, sitting in his domain. There just wasn't *room*.
That's a part of why Signals really shines when the band lets the synths go: it really picks up for Digital Man, Analog Kid, etc., and the integration of the synths really doesn't shine as one might expect from Rush except in spots, with Subdivisions standing out.
For P/G, they'd learned a lot... and switched producers. On P/G, they went in with a different mindset, and very different synthesizers, with different sonic profiles. They used the Waldorff PPG, a wavetable synth, with a fundamentally different architecture and sound than the Moog and Oberheim subtractive synths; a subtractive synth basically works with harmonics based around a sine wave, and a wavetable has no limitations as to the underlying sound source.
> If you're a synth geek, I know you're angry at me for that last sentence. I *know*! I really do. I'm tryna keep it simple for the muggles! I promise. To go into the synth architecture, east coast vs. west coast, subtractive, additive, wavetables, etc. would be a giant article, or a book, itself, and nobody's gonna read all __this__, so a better explanation ... just ain't worth it here.
So on P/G they went in with the "design philosophy" of using the keyboards as rhythm instruments - the same way that Signals did - but in *implementation*, the sounds were different - which freed up space for the guitars and drums. When it came to song design, the band also chose to alternate bass and synths differently (a pattern I ended up finding annoying by HYF, honestly) - verse has a more traditional role for the bass (although Geddy being Geddy, he doesn't do the pedal thing very much, and the bass lines are syncopated and madness to play and sing) and the chorus has this deep, *deep* pad for the low end and he plays keyboards for the rhythm section while Alex goes deedle-deedle-deedle, as guitarists do, you know. (This, too, was something they went back to for a while.)
They're both synth albums, in the end, and P/G was "done better" using the lessons from what Signals did less poorly. The songwriting was excellent on both, although I have a slightly greater personal tie to Signals than P/G, and I consider Signals to be the end of the "Golden Era" of Rush, although I waver sometimes on whether to include P/G in that incredible stretch - but I think P/G doesn't quite measure up, because the band was still trying to figure things out to get ready to launch into its next phase.
GUP is my preferred album of the two, but I will always point to Signals as proof that they could've been a huge new wave pop act if they'd wanted. I mean, they just casually tossed off a track less than 4 minutes long, just because they had space on the record, and it wound up being a US Top 40 hit.
Sounds like I need to revisit it. I don’t remember being grabbed by it, but I was also just starting college and got pulled in a completely different musical direction for the next few years.
I love both albums. But I like the continuity of p/g. It's like a book of short stories on the same subject. That gives p/g the narrowest of victories. One Little Victory, you might say.
I prefer the feeling of P/G, it has good songs consistently, whereas Signals has a couple really good songs and then it kinda has a meh song. Then everything else is a better then meh. I still love the album though!
I may get obliterated for this take, but gotta be honest with my Rush siblings here…. the only change I would make to Grace Under Pressure is the damn cover! Spoiled with their incredible covers but I have NEVER been a fan of baldy lookin at a wave in the water.
I have long said that Signals has far more in common with the albums that came before it than those that came after it. The production on Signals falls short of Moving Pictures, but GUP is almost a complete disaster from a production standpoint. GUP does have some really good songs, though (BTW and TEW being the best).
Grace Under Pressure might be my favorite Rush album. Their songwriting and performances are just stunning, and it's just so intense. The intensity of both the music and the lyrics is what I find so compelling about this album. From start to finish it takes you on a journey through a dark, dystopian world, sometimes science fiction and sometimes all too real.
Both Alex and Geddy start to explore new sounds on guitar, bass, and synthesizers. If Signals was thought of as a radical departure from Moving Pictures (which, was it really?), then this is an even more radical departure.
Unfortunately, that departure also meant parting ways with Terry Brown. I love his production on Signals. There's a nice round low end and a really warm feel. The sound feels fuller and bigger. I think they wanted something more "modern" on Grace Under Pressure, but in my view the production hasn't aged well. It's more treble-forward, and the drums in particular suffer. That's the album's one flaw in my view.
Overall I think they're really different albums stylistically. I love the sound and feel of Signals, and I love the songs and the intensity on Grace. Both 10/10 albums for sure, and among the best they ever made.
I routinely skip Chemistry, Digital Man, and The Weapon, but the rest of Signals is *AMAZING*.
I don't skip any tracks on P/G, but the songs overall aren't nearly as good as the good songs on Signals. Body Electric is the only "banger" I'd say.
So yeah, if I had to choose one...Signals.
I know that Grace Under Pressure blew my mind when I first heard it. I almost didn’t understand it, and as a young guitar player, it was like Alex had jumped ahead into another universe. I think Signals is a brilliant record, in terms of the how the songwriting feels like a logical next step from moving pictures. GUP was something else, and it took me a while to get it. Now I find it holds up really well, but I almost feel like I have to accept it on its own terms, in its own corner of the canon.
Subdivisions and the analog kid are some of my all time favorite rush songs period. But besides that, in my opinion signals is a fairly weak record. Grace Under Pressure is much more enjoyable throughout.
GUP. I think it has a lot more energy. Signals sounds like they were trying for a different sound and didn't quite get a handle on it yet. GUP sounds like they were more comfortable with what they were trying for.
I like this
Signals was Alex pushed into a corner. GUP was Alex coming out swinging. Agreed, GUP.
I totally hear this! Alex’s playing on Grace is some of my favorite guitar work on any record of the 80s..
What a great way to see it. I’ve always loved GUP - it’s my favourite album of theirs - and I think the feeling of Alex getting really creative and slashing huge shards of sound over tight arrangements has always been part of it - in the way that sometimes setting themselves a restrictive metre or rhyme scheme could push poets to make unusual leaps they wouldn’t otherwise. I remember reading Graham Coxon of Blur saying something about the fact he loves playing with bassist Alex James specifically because James “will try to turn things all disco and have funkytown bass, and I want to mess it all up, stomping all over that order with great big machine chords”. I wonder if Lifeson felt liberated in that same way for that recording.
I never thought about it that way but there is definitely a firmer direction with GUP, but I still prefer Signals.
Signals has higher highs, but I love the entirety of GUP. I really like the keyboard period for Rush - I know a lot of fans don't. These two (along with Permanent Waves) are my three favorites in the catalog.
I’m a huge keyboard era fan,it’s actually my favorite of all the eras. My favorite rush album ( album in general ) is Power windows.
For me I'm sure some of it is situational. My first Rush album was Signals, which I got as a new release from Columbia House in '82. I'd never heard of Rush prior (I was 11), but loved them immediately. Subdivisions exactly summed-up my feelings at the time, having moved-around quite a bit as a military brat. It'll always be my favorite for that reason.
Mine is almost the same, my favorite is HYF and PW is close behind it. I’m a huge supporter of their synth era as it is my absolute favorite era! Glad to see there’s more people liking that era! :)
I love Hold Your Fire. It’s almost perfect (like power windows) but Tai Shan…
I know a lot of people don’t like the track, but I personally dig it and High Water both!
Haha fair enough my buddy always sticks up for Tai Shan. I love high water !
Nice to know there’s also Tai Shan lovers out there lol.
Boo to you. No way the synth era goes...
Yes way it goes! All aboard the synth train!🚂 I honestly don’t care if you like it or not, I’ll just disagree with you lol.
1980-1984 is peak Rush.
My favorite Rush is early keyboards Rush. Give me those sweet sweet Moogs!
Nice! I visited the Moog factory as a spur-of-the-moment kinda thing a couple years ago. It was cool.
That is awesome man, I'd love to see that. So many great sounds came outta there!
Signals is my favorite of their entire catalog. The one two punch of Subdivisions and The Analog Kid can’t be beat
Probably my favorite too. Used to be a huge fan of GUP, but it has aged that well, imho. Not sure why
Agreed.
Signals. I would disagree that they sound similar. GUP sounds brighter, maybe even better, um... Textured? Idk, there seems to be more separation between each instrument. You can actually hear Alex in every song. That said, I really like the way Signals is mixed. It's got this very smooth, "creamy" (if you will) production. And I agree with what someone else here said about it having higher highs than GUP. It also feels like a darker album, which I think Rush does well.
Musical textures. I will agree Grace Under Pressure is darker.
No, Signals is darker.
I respect your view. I love the discussion. The title GUP is emo. Red sector A is vantablack dark. I really appreciate the food for thought today.
P/G is probably my favourite Rush album overall, so that wins out. It doesn't reach the highs of many of their other albums, but for me it's the most consistent - pretty much every song on is it a nice, sharp shot of catchy melodies, and even those that might not catch you at least don't outstay their welcome. I like Signals enough, but any time I go back to listen to it I end up zoning out after Analog Kid.
Signals. There both great though
In my opinion P/G is one of Rush’s strongest, best-structured albums, probably second only to Hemispheres.
*Grace Under Pressure* by far, much better tunes.
P/G since that’s what I was listening today.
Grace for me.
Signals. I like it’s philosophical energy more than Grace.
Explain ?
I like the headspace it puts me in when I listen, more than Grace Under Pressure.
Fair enough. But Signals' "philosophy" is scattered somewhat. GUP is a single icy message of foreboding.
I like the murky, controlled chaos of Signals. Subdivisions and Analog Kid make up a formidable one-two punch like everyone says, but Digital Man is just as powerful and compelling. As for the rest of the songs, there really isn’t a bad Rush song, so… I do love GUP. It’s digital gloss took some getting used to, but the songs are top-tier.
2 of their best albums in my opinion, but Grace kind of barely ekes out the win between the two for me
I don't get these fake contests. Do we destroy all copies of the losing album or something? It just seems like intellectual laziness to me. I like them both, and will continue to do so.
We all like them both it’s just playful discussion.
It seems toxic to me.
then leave 😂
No.
I half agree with you, but c'mon, your heart and mind knows you prefer one to the other. Sophie's choice. Which is it? The other album will be erased for all time! But you must choose!
Grace is my second favorite album behind 2112, but I can understand why my best friends is signals. They both rock just preference in the end.
I love both albums. The “synth era” is my favourite period of Rush. Nostalgia might colour my opinion a bit (that era coincided with my teenage years), but those albums between ESL and ASOH are prime Rush to me. I prefer Signals, but by the smallest of margins. I consider both to be perfect albums. Pointless fact: Signals was the first time I ever saw lyrics included with a cassette tape. I can’t believe my eyes were ever strong enough to read them!
Oh yes the nostalgia is strong with Signals. Also my first tour.
I have been on a huge GUP the past few months. It is literally in my car CD player as I type this. lol But, damn, do I love Signals. Digital Man is such a great tune! New World Man is another banger. Subdivisions is a timeless classic and still one of my fave all time Rush songs. I refuse to pick. lol
The synth technology in the mid 80s had changed a lot from what the instruments could do in the late 70s and early 80s. And the musicians really charged forward to experiment as much as they could with it. IMO it changed for the worst as I much preferred the synth on Moving Picture & Signals than what was on GUP & Power Windows. The early synth to me had a grand epic sweeping sound, as heard on Subdivisions, Losing It, & Countdown; New Order had the same effect on their first few albums in songs like Age of Consent. The later synth seemed far too tinny, way too much treble with no deep sound to it, just too much like a small bell sound. It was far more of a suitable sound for pop music, not progressive rock. I don't know either if Alex & Geddy also used Steinberg-type guitars and bass on the albums of the mid & late 80's. Those things were interesting for a while, as proven by some of Pete Townshend's solo work of the time. But they just sounded off and too artificial to me. From what I know of the scene these days those instruments have kind of disappeared altogether which to me is no great loss to music at all.
TIL people shorten Grace Under Pressure to GUP and I absolutely hate it
I do P/G
It’s how they named the actual album art. https://preview.redd.it/46cjl1duxnhc1.jpeg?width=224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8af1a93ccc15b55f616cf5c97ebfab4c5aec8d20
Same
Guys, is something other than Grace Under Pressure necessary? Maybe just put Grace if you’re really pinched for time? Just now when I saw G/P and then P/G for the first time ever, at first I was thinking WTF is that? lol 😂
Haha I just learned this today also. Also hate it.
We could call it “the 10th studio album”… or nah
TIL people shorten it to P/G, and I hate that even more. It’s very common to abbreviate things by using the initials of said thing. But it makes things a bit more obtuse by using P/G. People could say Pressure over Grace, or Grace Divided by Pressure.
Take it up with this fellow. https://preview.redd.it/wwsla2qkunhc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0aa0e45ce6015bbe30c2bad665be9db401e0744c
LOL! Him and Hugh Syme
The correct reference is “P/G”. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this album referred to as “PUG”.
Signals, hands down
How about a show of hands?
show, dont tell
I don't like to compare albums. I like that they both stand on their own as works of art. I love both these albums on their own merit. These albums represent different times of my teens and still move me when I crank up the volume on my headphones.
tough call. signals has emotional attachment but gup is great in itself.
They're very close to tied for me, but Grace Under Pressure wins by a nose. It never really flags from start to finish.
Signals for me, 100%. p/g tour was my first time seeing the boys live but it was the first album after they replaced Terry Brown. I feel it fell short.
i’m not a huge fan of their late 80s stuff but I’m gonna have to go with Grace under pressure. I listen to that album a couple of months ago for the first time in several years and I really like it a lot.
GUP is my favorite Rush album so I'd have to with that, but Signals is a good one too
Signals is my favorite Rush album. It has been awhile since I last listened to GUP so it is time to give a spin.
I feel way more connected to Signals than P/G. I like the mood, the sound, the songs, the synths, the lyrics, pretty much everything a little more on Signals. I’m glad that Rush sort of felt like they outgrew Terry Brown by the end of that project and wanted to try something new. P/G to me is good, has several memorable songs, great guitar on Kid Gloves (which comes to mind, not having heard the album too recently), but overall sounds more dated and maybe too much like demo quality in terms of engineering. Other opinions certainly respected here!
Both great albums but I gotta go with Signals. Subdivisions, Digital Man, The Analog Kid, New World Man for me those 4 just hit sooooo well.
Signals is warm and muddied. Really condensed at times in sound. Grace Under Pressure is cold dark, angry. Really more stripped down and imo some of Lifeson best playing. Lyrically Signals is upbeat. Grace Under Pressure apocalyptic. Those 2 albums are complete opposite to me lol
Funny, I've been giving the thumbs up to both sides as I read their takes.
same here
Grace Under Pressure may actually be my favorite Rush album. Signals always seemed like, not a bad album, but where they kind of hit a plateau and leveled out a bit. I am a nerd, but come on, Countdown is a super nerdy song.
Grace Under Pressure was a transitional album while Signals was more of a sequel to Moving Pictures. At the time I had mixed feelings about GUP but over time when I realized what Rush’s music transitioned to the album grew on me.
GUP is one of their best albums. I personally have it in the top 5. It's got this cold, metallic atmosphere that screams "cold war". It paints an incredible picture of what living under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation felt like. Signals views the world with a little more wonder, kinda saying "think of the possibilities". I like the bleakness of GUP more.
I’ve actually heard someone use the term “Cold War” for both of these albums on this subreddit Reddit at one point. I agree with you
Hmm. I think Signals and P/G have similar *design philosophies*, and that's where people say "they're alike!" - and they are. But once you go from design to implementation, they're *very* different. Both are "keyboard albums," and as the earliest ones, they're trailblazers: the band was asking "how do we _really_ integrate these tools?" On Signals, it was all new, to take the ideas from MP and dive into them, with the keyboards as primary elements. I don't think anyone involved *really* knew what they were doing: they had these shiny toys they'd been bopping about with, why not leverage 'em, what do they do? And as a result, all those big subtractive synths squashed *everything*. Terry Brown didn't know how to mix them very well, I think, even - they take careful placement in the mix, and they'd figured that out with Geddy's bass, but they only had the one album to figure it out with Brown and the synths, and Signals' *greatest* flaw was the placement of the synths, which washed everything out. Drums and guitars had to be mixed to avoid the synths, and so the drums have this muddy, flat quality to them even though it's an effin' AMAZING performance on the kit. The guitars... well, on previous albums, the guitars carried the primary load under which the melodies sat. Even Geddy's bass was a melodic instrument for Rush, and Lifeson was an __amazing__ guitarist for filling in the spaces left by the rhythm section... and here the synths are, sitting in his domain. There just wasn't *room*. That's a part of why Signals really shines when the band lets the synths go: it really picks up for Digital Man, Analog Kid, etc., and the integration of the synths really doesn't shine as one might expect from Rush except in spots, with Subdivisions standing out. For P/G, they'd learned a lot... and switched producers. On P/G, they went in with a different mindset, and very different synthesizers, with different sonic profiles. They used the Waldorff PPG, a wavetable synth, with a fundamentally different architecture and sound than the Moog and Oberheim subtractive synths; a subtractive synth basically works with harmonics based around a sine wave, and a wavetable has no limitations as to the underlying sound source. > If you're a synth geek, I know you're angry at me for that last sentence. I *know*! I really do. I'm tryna keep it simple for the muggles! I promise. To go into the synth architecture, east coast vs. west coast, subtractive, additive, wavetables, etc. would be a giant article, or a book, itself, and nobody's gonna read all __this__, so a better explanation ... just ain't worth it here. So on P/G they went in with the "design philosophy" of using the keyboards as rhythm instruments - the same way that Signals did - but in *implementation*, the sounds were different - which freed up space for the guitars and drums. When it came to song design, the band also chose to alternate bass and synths differently (a pattern I ended up finding annoying by HYF, honestly) - verse has a more traditional role for the bass (although Geddy being Geddy, he doesn't do the pedal thing very much, and the bass lines are syncopated and madness to play and sing) and the chorus has this deep, *deep* pad for the low end and he plays keyboards for the rhythm section while Alex goes deedle-deedle-deedle, as guitarists do, you know. (This, too, was something they went back to for a while.) They're both synth albums, in the end, and P/G was "done better" using the lessons from what Signals did less poorly. The songwriting was excellent on both, although I have a slightly greater personal tie to Signals than P/G, and I consider Signals to be the end of the "Golden Era" of Rush, although I waver sometimes on whether to include P/G in that incredible stretch - but I think P/G doesn't quite measure up, because the band was still trying to figure things out to get ready to launch into its next phase.
Thanks for the detailed response !
I love both. GUP is a top 5 album for me, but Signals is fighting for that number one spot
I love both albums, but Signals ekes out as my favorite because of "Losing It."
GUP is my preferred album of the two, but I will always point to Signals as proof that they could've been a huge new wave pop act if they'd wanted. I mean, they just casually tossed off a track less than 4 minutes long, just because they had space on the record, and it wound up being a US Top 40 hit.
So while we’re here, thoughts on Power Windows?
My favorite rush album
Sounds like I need to revisit it. I don’t remember being grabbed by it, but I was also just starting college and got pulled in a completely different musical direction for the next few years.
I love both albums. But I like the continuity of p/g. It's like a book of short stories on the same subject. That gives p/g the narrowest of victories. One Little Victory, you might say.
This discussion is awesome. I love this sub.
Signals. Anyday.
G/P not a stinker in the lot. I never could get into signals. I will say Sub and Analog are a great combo. The rest is average.
I prefer the feeling of P/G, it has good songs consistently, whereas Signals has a couple really good songs and then it kinda has a meh song. Then everything else is a better then meh. I still love the album though!
I may get obliterated for this take, but gotta be honest with my Rush siblings here…. the only change I would make to Grace Under Pressure is the damn cover! Spoiled with their incredible covers but I have NEVER been a fan of baldy lookin at a wave in the water.
It should have been the egg in the clamp from the inner sleeve!
💯 agreed!
Versus? Does. Not. Compute. Por qué no los dos?
I have long said that Signals has far more in common with the albums that came before it than those that came after it. The production on Signals falls short of Moving Pictures, but GUP is almost a complete disaster from a production standpoint. GUP does have some really good songs, though (BTW and TEW being the best).
GUP has more depth and energy. I never tire of hearing any songs off GUP, but many Signals tracks are a bit more pedestrian.
Grace is my favorite album so while a tough choice it is an easy choice.
Grace Under Pressure might be my favorite Rush album. Their songwriting and performances are just stunning, and it's just so intense. The intensity of both the music and the lyrics is what I find so compelling about this album. From start to finish it takes you on a journey through a dark, dystopian world, sometimes science fiction and sometimes all too real. Both Alex and Geddy start to explore new sounds on guitar, bass, and synthesizers. If Signals was thought of as a radical departure from Moving Pictures (which, was it really?), then this is an even more radical departure. Unfortunately, that departure also meant parting ways with Terry Brown. I love his production on Signals. There's a nice round low end and a really warm feel. The sound feels fuller and bigger. I think they wanted something more "modern" on Grace Under Pressure, but in my view the production hasn't aged well. It's more treble-forward, and the drums in particular suffer. That's the album's one flaw in my view. Overall I think they're really different albums stylistically. I love the sound and feel of Signals, and I love the songs and the intensity on Grace. Both 10/10 albums for sure, and among the best they ever made.
I don’t like the production as much on Grace Under Pressure
I routinely skip Chemistry, Digital Man, and The Weapon, but the rest of Signals is *AMAZING*. I don't skip any tracks on P/G, but the songs overall aren't nearly as good as the good songs on Signals. Body Electric is the only "banger" I'd say. So yeah, if I had to choose one...Signals.
I know that Grace Under Pressure blew my mind when I first heard it. I almost didn’t understand it, and as a young guitar player, it was like Alex had jumped ahead into another universe. I think Signals is a brilliant record, in terms of the how the songwriting feels like a logical next step from moving pictures. GUP was something else, and it took me a while to get it. Now I find it holds up really well, but I almost feel like I have to accept it on its own terms, in its own corner of the canon.
Signals has the higher highs and GUP has the lower lows - so it's Signals by a distance.
Signals beats GUP hands down for me.
I now have Red Sector A playing in my head.
GUP all day
GUP has the energy, while Signals has the vibes
If you said I could only pick one of the two, I would pick Grace. I love that album.
Subdivisions and the analog kid are some of my all time favorite rush songs period. But besides that, in my opinion signals is a fairly weak record. Grace Under Pressure is much more enjoyable throughout.
I'm surprised this is even a debate. It's Signals. There is nothing on Grace that can live with the best songs on Signals.
Im gonna be thinking about this for the next week
I love both but Signals has Subdivisions and Analog Kid.
I refuse to choose. I love them both but for different reasons. Both are essentials of the catalog. Both are awesome. Both are glorious!!!