A Farewell to Kings

A highly philosophical album whose message is locked like a spell within the music, A Farewell to Kings is a treatise on the possibility of the intersection of the real and the ideal. It expresses profound discontent regarding the state of things as they now stand and desires a return to the way things used to be, not in the good old days sense but in that archetypal quest for a return to Eden, Atlantis, or Xanadu. Rush, like Plato, is sketching out the blueprint for a perfect society, where the philosopher and plowman not only each knows his part but is content within that role. Also, though I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to music, I can't think of another album that has a to-be-continued song like "Cygnus", which is picked up on their next album.