After Hold Your Fire, many of us wondered what Rush would come up with next. Would they continue down the super technical and increasingly keyboard laden path, or would they truly progress and try to do something else? They chose “something else”.

Presto began a change of path which would, arguably find its fulfilment in the crunching guitar territory of Counterparts. Producer Rupert Hine wanted to get them back to being what they were originally – the classic power rock trio. The keyboards were stripped back, but not removed, and Lifeson was push further forward in the sound, but still in a restrained way.

Opener Show Don't Tell is a prime example. It is a basic power trio song – guitar, bass and drum with light keyboard / string type touches, but the guitar doesn't DRIVE the song as much as it could. Throughout the song writing is of a high standard. The Pass is beautiful, as is Available Light. Presto is a wonderful 5mins, that I so pleased to see on the Clockwork Angels tour. Chain Lightning, War Paint, Scars, Hand Over Fist – all good songs; no fillers.

Lyrically, it seems a happier album – if “happy” is what Peart does! Heavy political themes (Red Tide apart) give way to more personal concerns, and I liked that. Only down is Superconductor, which is (unintentionally) silly methinks. Even Anagram, which is purposefully silly kinda works!

No European Tour for this, so much of it we never saw live. The songs we did see later – Show Don't Tell, The Pass, Presto and Superconductor – were all impressive, even though as I said, I thought SC was the weakest track on the album, and didn't really kick live.

A great way to end the 90s. A worthy part of the Rush canon