CROWN LANDS

Fearless SPINEFARM

CODY BOWLES DRUMS LIKE NEIL PEART AND SINGS LIKE GEDDY LEE.

They’re just like Rush but there’s only two of them.

Crown Lands have never hidden their admiration for Rush. And while the blues-prog-rock of the hirsute Canadian duo’s self-titled debut album may have steered clear of outright impersonation, it’s fair to say that guitarist/bassist/keyboard player Kevin Comeau and drummer/vocalist Cody Bowles have since gone Full Starman. Indeed, Comeau has Rush’s iconic logo tattooed on his butt, such is his dedication to their illustrious forebears.

Follow-up Fearless is so Rush-like it’s almost a surprise when the Rocinante herself doesn’t hove into view, swiftly pursued by By-Tor and a full pack of snow dogs. Produced by David Bottrill (who remixed Rush’s Vapor Trails in 2013), it’s an album of crazed ambition. It’ll also divide Rush fans, tearing them asunder between those delighted that someone has attempted such a precise approximation of the band at their proggiest, and those for whom that turf is sacred and will be horrified.

Irrespective of the closeness with which it sails close to Rush, Fearless is a wonderful album. Eighteen-minute opener Starlifter: Fearless Pt II might sound like the next chapter in the adventures of Cygnus X-1 (apart from the section that borrows from Led Zeppelin’s Achilles Last Stand) but it’s so thrilling – and so free of self-imposed restrictions – that it feels churlish to point out that someone else got their first.

The playing is ferocious. Time signatures collapse and collide. There’s a segment that races like an actual red Barchetta and another that briefly visits the Permanent Waves section of Rush’s Natural Science. Bowles drums like Neil

Peart and sings like Geddy Lee, while Comeau plays guitar like Alex Lifeson and bass (and Taurus pedals!) like Lee. And it’s all enormous fun.

Elsewhere it’s more of the same except where it isn’t.

Right Way Back (sample lyric: ‘Fly fearless through the night’)

is a tribute to Peart that rattles along with giddy abandon. Context: Fearless Pt I almost out-Rushes Pt II. The closing Citadel is absolutely gorgeous. And then there’s The Shadow,

with the chorus of an MTV-era Scorpions classic. Throughout, the ridiculous ambition is matched only by the joy with which the songs are performed, and the obvious love for the source material.

Where Crown Lands go next will be interesting. Will they move on, happy to have got Geddy and co out of their system? Are they the prog Greta Van Fleet, content to provide a facsimile of days long gone for an audience that missed out first time round? Only time will tell. In the meantime, Fearless

is fantastic. And it sure beats the hell out of Caress Of Steel.