Rush has announced a new Super Deluxe edition of their 1984 album Grace Under Pressure. The collection comes in 4CD & Blu-ray and 5LP & Blu-ray packages. In addition to a newly remastered 1984 stereo mix, frequent Rush collaborator Terry Brown has done a brand-new stereo mix of the album. The box set includes liner notes by the band’s own Geddy Lee, while Hugh Syme, known for his album covers and art concepts created for Rush, made new illustrations shown in the booklet.
The Grace Under Pressure Super Deluxe edition also includes the 1984 album Grace Under Pressure Tour: Live in Toronto, the concert video on Blu-ray, and four music videos.
The tenth album from the Canadian prog-rock legends, Grace Under Pressure, was the band’s first made without their long-time producer Terry Brown, who had manned the studio for every Rush album since 1975’s Fly By Night. After an amicable parting, production duties were split between the band themselves and engineer Peter Henderson, chiefly noted for having produced, engineered, and mixed Supertramp’s multi-platinum behemoth, Breakfast In America.
Recording took place in Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec, between November 1983 and March 1984. Grace Under Pressure was released just one month later, on April 12, 1984. The follow-up to 1982’s Signals finds the band pursuing a more synthesizer-oriented sound. Drummer Neil Peart’s lyrics reflect the gloom, existential sorrow, and anxiety during the late Cold War years.
Album opener “Distant Early Warning” is a dystopian travelogue and features a music video that references Dr. Strangelove with a child sitting astride a missile. “Red Sector A” was inspired by the testimony of Lee’s mother and father (survivors of the Bergen-Belsen and Dachau concentration camps, respectively), while “Between The Wheels” paraphrases “The Star-Spangled Banner” to chilling effect. “Afterimage” is dedicated to Le Studio tape op Robbie Whelan, who had recently been killed in a car crash.
Grace Under Pressure brought the group into the Top 5 in Britain and Canada, while also going Top 10 in the US.
Later this year, Rush will embark on their Fifty Something Tour. As indicated by the name, the tour celebrates roughly half a century since the 1974 formation of Rush’s classic power trio lineup with bassist/vocalist Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and Peart. It’s the band’s first tour since 2015 and the first since Peart’s death in 2020, with Anika Nilles taking over behind the kit. The band will play two sets each night, with each night featuring a unique setlist built from a catalog of 35 Rush favorites.
Rush recently released the 50-track super deluxe anthology, RUSH 50, which is available in a range of formats. RUSH 50’s tracklist stretches all the way from the band’s 1973 debut single to a live recording of the final song Lee, Lifeson, and Peart played together at the Forum on the closing night of the R40 Tour in 2015.
