I am pretty confident that the music on this will be most excellent, but the key to how good it really is will be the vocal melodies. Geddy's voice ain't nearly what it used to be, but he still does a mostly good job in the studio, so hopefully they wrote some good and memorable melodies.
I agree - Geddy's vocal melodies have been a bit hit-or-miss since TFE, so let's hope with Booujzhe's help, Geddy has some awesome vocal hooks for us to hum for weeks and months to come.
It's interesting - this album will have the band's shortest track ("BU2B2" at 1:28), but also four of the band's longest tracks since
Moving Pictures ("Clockwork Angels", "The Anarchist" and "The Garden", all near or over 7 minutes long).
It's nice to see such variety on this album, in terms of track lengths. For years, we've had albums with songs all in the 4-6 minute range, with few exceptions. It's been a nice transition, though, as 2 songs on VT stretched over 6 minutes, and 3 songs on S&A, and now 5 on CA. If they keep this trend up, their 20th studio album might be 7-9 songs, all in the 6-8 minute range...or perhaps one over 10 minutes long? We can only hope...
-Marc