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After 5 long months of waiting, Rush’s Snakes & Arrows tour finally arrived in Montreal.

Some photos and video, shot with my Canon SD 800 IS:

Entre Nous (snippet)

Circumstances (snippet)

Tom Sawyer (snippet)

The Main Monkey Business (snippet)

YYZ (snippet)

Spirit of the Radio (snippet)

Highlights:

- Entre Nous
I love this song… never thought I’d get to see them perform it… wow. Chills.

- Freewill
Call me crazy, but I was disappointed when I learned that Freewill was back. I’d had enough of this song. However, the boys delivered such an inspired performance, that it almost felt like a brand-new song. Geddy hit the high notes, and utterly killed on the bass parts.

- TMMB
Superb.

- Between The Wheels
Wow. Possibly an even better performance than on R30. Alex nailed the solo.

- Workin’ Them Angels
Suprisingly excellent song, live. I wasn’t expecting that.

- The Way The Wind Blows
Easily the best live track from S&A. Neil’s verse parts are so powerful, and really drive the song.

- Subdivisions
An inspired rendition. As with Tom Sawyer (see below), I haven’t enjoyed this tune more than I did, last night. Magical.

- Natural Science
Brilliant song, they nailed it!

- Witch Hunt
Never a big fan of this track… until last night. This is one of those songs that can’t be fully appreciated without a haunting light-show backdrop, and 13k excited fans.

- MalNar
Easily my favorite segue to the Professor’s solo. Geddy killed on the fretless.

- Drum Solo
Wow… just, wow! The reworked solo flows really well, and blends chaos and precision. Neil was visibly elated during the solo’s big band finale. Bopping his head, and ear-to-ear grin.

- The Spirit Of Radio
SotR is always electrifying, but there was somehting special in last night’s rendition… pure synergy between band and audience. I’m happy they put this tune back where it belongs: near the end of the show.

- Tom Sawyer
South Park intro creates the perfect mood for this timeless classic. I haven’t enjoyed TS this much since the first time I saw Rush, back on the PW tour. Brilliant!

- Geddy’s voice
I don’t know what Geddy did to prepare his voice for this tour, or what he does to prepare for each show, but his voice hasn’t ever sounded better (at least since I started seeing them, back in 1985). He pushed his range, and never seemed to struggle. Bravo Geddy!

The balance of the songs were all well performed, but – more or less – failed to fully connect with me and/or the audience.

Lowlight:

- Sound
The best way I can describe the sound quality from the show is with an analogy. Last night’s show is to live sound engineering what Vapor Trails is to album sound engineering. While the show was not overly loud, there was so much distortion that I often had to block my ears to fully appreciate certain segments of the show, like Alex’s solo in BtW. Not sure what was going on, but their last 3 shows in this venue had much better sound quality.

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Read T’Cha Dunlevy’s review of last night’s fantastic show, in today’s Montreal Gazette.