In 1996, 3 years after Counterparts, Test For Echo was released. I was working at DataBeam, which had just been acquired by Lotus, which had just been acquired by IBM. All was well with the world.

I remember that I didn’t like the album at first, but it grew on me pretty quickly. But I can’t really say that anything on this album rises to my “all time favorite Rush” list. The tunes are catchy, the lyrics are clever, but nothing is *amazing*.

I don’t suppose there’s anything I need to say about Virtuality that hasn’t already been said by thousands of Rush fans. Even in 1996 it was super cringey, and it’s just gotten worse since.

Driven is perhaps the best track on the album, and is just a lot of fun. Half the world is perhaps my favorite lyrics on the album.

I was fascinated to learn that Alex considers Resist one of his favorite Rush tracks ever. I do like the lyrics, which appear to take an Oscar Wilde quote and extend the metaphor.

Anyways, it’s a good listen, and I found myself thinking a number of times that the worst Rush album is better than the best of a lot of other bands. But this one just doesn’t really do it for me. It doesn’t hold together as an album, in the way that many other Rush albums do. I don’t feel that, as an album, it’s really *about* anthing, in the sense that, for example, Roll The Bones or Counterparts are.