So... I have been listening to two of my favorite albums a LOT lately - Permanent Waves and Power Windows. Both are just amazing albums and, ironically enough, the third album in their respective periods/phases of the Rush discography (oddly enough, Counterparts also ranks high on my Rush-albums rankings - don't know about Caress Of Steel, but it's pretty good for what it is).
PEW is just amazing front-to-back, with two solid songs opening the album, and a very grandiose and epic song in "Jacob's Ladder", with it's various loud/heavy and soft sections. Then on Side 2, we open with two more very solid songs ("Entre Nous" becoming a fast favorite, while "Different Strings" has always been one of those "deep album" gems), and another epic, but this time on the more prog-metal-esque side. "Natural Science" definitely blends together the epic sounds of their past multi-part songs with the more song-oriented sound. It's definitely a great way to end such an amazing album, which probably stands in my Top 3 Rush albums.
As for POW, each song is pretty much a hit for me, with a couple being less so, like "The Big Money", which took me awhile to warm-up to, despite being the album's lead-off single. However, songs like "Marathon", "Manhattan Project" and "Middletown Dreams" are just rocking and epic in a way that only Rush could do in 4-6 minutes. It's as if Rush set out to write songs with an epic feel but without bloating them to 10+ minutes. By this time, their writing had become really focused, and we got "epic" songs like "Marathon", which is probably one of my favorite songs from the band's "Synth-era", and with the live ending, it's even better! I'm a bit displeased that the live version on A Show Of Hands seems a bit slow, but they've seemed to bring it back up to speed on the recent Time Machine Tour! (thank goodness!)
-Marc.