Eh. Kinda.
Test for Echo means well. Oh, how it sounds like it means well. But for me, this album is the poster child for an album that blended too much and should have just kept the good stuff going just for one more album. At the end of the day, on the spectrum of 90s Rush albums, unfortunately, this one falls closer to Roll the Bones than it does Counterparts – and even sounds like it, too.
Test for Echo is a strange combination of songs. Some are heavy and sound like leftovers from Counterparts two years prior, other songs sound like they should belong on future Rush releases and others just don’t sound like they belong on this album at all. As a whole work, the album wants to mean well and continue the good things that came from Counterparts, but ultimately feels like it aborted that ambition and stutter-stepped too often and lost it’s direction.
Like all the Rush albums through this decade, the album has a handful of star pieces for different reasons. The title track, ‘Time and Motion’, ‘Driven’, and ‘Dog Years’ stand out for carrying the torch over from Counterparts with heavy rocking and big sounds. Unfortunately, the lyrical problem I brought up in the Counterparts review lingers here with these songs. The topics the band is trying to cover seem too heady for the kind of music they’re playing on this album. (’Dog Years’ gets bonus points because I’m pretty sure it’s the only song where Neil plays double-time metal drums ever which is a joy to listen to – albeit if only for a few seconds here and there throughout the song.)
Then there are the odd balls of this album. ‘Totem’, ‘Half the World’ and ‘Resist’ because they’re such bizarre tracks in on this album because compared to the three tracks mentioned before that had a consistent sound about them, these songs don’t really have much in common with each other or whatever direction this album is trying to go for. You have the rich, swooning acoustic guitars of ’Resist’, an optimistic song, just before another skull banger from the Counterparts sound, ‘Virtuality’ right after it.
The biggest issue with Test for Echo is that it lacks direction. Just about every Rush release prior to this had some kind of focus or direction to it. Even the band’s most experimental material like Caress of Steel can have an argument made for it that’s it’s entire reason for existing was to push the boundaries of progressive rock and serve as a stepping stone for the better received 2112. Hold Your Fire took the band’s pop direction and turned it up to 11 with guest vocalists – a first for the band. Presto tackled dark themes of depression and sanity and made an explicit focus on lyricism. Test for Echo really doesn’t have any of that. It’s just…an album. A collection of songs which, to the devoted Rush fan, is a bit of a let down.
Test for Echo bears the question: where can the band go from here?
Test for Echo (1996)
- Test for Echo – 5:56
- Driven – 4:27
- Half the World – 3:41
- The Color of Right – 4:48
- Time and Motion – 5:04
- Totem – 5:00
- Dog Years – 4:56
- Virtuality – 5:43
- Resist – 4:22
- Limbo – 5:28
- Carve Away the Stone – 4:05
Credits on Test for Echo
Liam Birt | Executive Producer |
Pegi Cecconi | Executive Producer |
Peter Collins | Arranger, Producer |
Pye Dubois | Composer |
Eugene Fisher | Photography |
Anthony Frederick | Photography |
Tom Heron | Assistant, Assistant Engineer |
Chris Laidlaw | Assistant, Assistant Engineer |
Geddy Lee | Arranger, Composer, Guitar (Bass), Producer, Synthesizer, Vocals |
Alex Lifeson | Arranger, Composer, Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Mandola, Producer |
Bob Ludwig | Mastering |
Andrew MacNaughtan | Photography |
Paul Marconi | Assistant, Assistant Engineer |
Richard C. Negus | Photography |
Clif Norrell | Engineer |
Neil Peart | Arranger, Composer, Cymbals, Drums, Dulcimer, Hammer Dulcimer, Producer |
Simon Pressey | Assistant Engineer, Unknown Contributor Role |
Everett Ravestein | Pre-Production |
Rush | Arranger, Primary Artist, Producer |
Dimo Safari | Photography |
Hugh Syme | Art Direction, Design, Digital Illustration, Unknown Contributor Role |
Hugh Syne | Art Direction, Design, Digital Illustration |
Andy Wallace | Mixing |
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