Vapor Trails



Vapor Trails is the seventeenth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, produced by Paul Northfield and released in May 2002. Its release marked the first studio album for the band since Test for Echo in 1996 (the longest gap between Rush albums to date) because of personal tragedies that befell drummer Neil Peart in the late 1990s. According to the band, the entire developmental process for Vapor Trails was extremely taxing and took about 14 months to finish, the longest the band had ever spent writing and recording a studio album. Despite controversy surrounding its production and sound quality, the album debuted to moderate praise and was supported by the band's first tour in six years, including first-ever concerts in Mexico City and Brazil, where they played to some of the largest crowds of their career. The album was certified gold in Canada in August 2002.

The song "Ghost Rider" appeared on the album and was written by Peart as a tribute to his travels around the US and Canada after his personal tragedies, while "One Little Victory" served as the first single in order to announce the band's return from hiatus.

The original audio mix of the album received criticism for its heavy use of dynamic range compression. Dissatisfied with the results, Rush had two of the album's tracks mixed again and re-released in Retrospective III: 1989–2008. The positive response to that move lead to a completely revamped version of the album, titled Vapor Trails Remixed, released in 2013. It was released both individually and as a part of the box set The Studio Albums 1989–2007.

Production
Vapor Trails is the first album since Caress of Steel to not feature keyboard/synthesizer music at any point. Instead, it incorporates many layers of guitar, bass guitar, drum and vocal tracks, as well as more personal lyrics.

Much of the recordings were from one-off jam sessions and many of the original takes from those sessions were used to construct the songs. Rush made extensive use of computers and music editing software to piece the jam session recordings into songs. Neil Peart remarked,

"Eventually Geddy began to sift through the vast number of jams they had created, finding a verse here, a chorus there, and piecing them together. Often a pattern had only ever been played once in passing, but through the use of computer tools it could be repeated or reworked into a part. Since all the writing, arranging, and recording was done on computer, a lot of time was spent staring at monitors, but most of the time technology was our friend, and helped us to combine spontaneity and craftwork. Talk was the necessary interface, of course, and once Geddy and Alex had agreed on basic structures, Geddy would go through the lyrics to see what might suit the music and "sing well", then come to me to discuss any improvements, additions, or deletions I could make from my end."

Criticism
The production of Vapor Trails has been criticized by critics and fans alike because of the album's "loud" sound quality. Albums such as this have been mastered so loud that additional digital distortion is generated during the production of the CD. The trend, known as the loudness war, had become very common on modern rock albums.

As told by Rip Rowan on the ProRec website, the damaged production is the result of overly compressed (clipped) audio levels during mastering.

Vapor Trails Remixed
Vapor Trails Remixed is a remixed version of Vapor Trails mixed by David Bottrill. The album was released by Atlantic Records and Rhino Entertainment on September 27, 2013, and entered at No. 35 on the Billboard 200 chart. The band had been unhappy with the original album's overall sonic production. Influenced by the positive reaction to the remixes of "One Little Victory" and "Earthshine" featured on Retrospective III by Richard Chycki, Rush and Bottrill remixed the entire album, though the playlist is identical to that of the original. In an interview with Modern Guitars, Lifeson remarked that since the remixes were so good, there has been talk of doing an entire remix of the album. He also stated:

"It was a contest, and it was mastered too high, and it crackles, and it spits, and it just crushes everything. All the dynamics get lost, especially anything that had an acoustic guitar in it."

Vapor Trails Remixed is also included in the box-set of Atlantic Studio Albums called The Studio Albums 1989–2007.

Personnel

 * Geddy Lee - bass guitar, vocals
 * Alex Lifeson - electric and acoustic guitars, mandola
 * Neil Peart - drums, percussion
 * Paul Northfield - producer

Album
Billboard Music Charts (United States)