Rush, Revitalized

I've never been what you'd call a Rush guy. Still not really a Rush guy. Yet I know every classic album, every riff, every fill, every castrati wail. It's just that historically I've had a threshold of tolerance, and that threshold is easily exceeded.

I've been thinking about Rush a lot lately, though. They're out on the Fifty Something tour right now, and the YouTube algorithm likes to feed me their recent Los Angeles shows (here’s an excellent one). The big surprise is that this isn’t a legacy act going through the motions. Rush sounds completely revitalized, in a way nobody could have predicted. This wasn't supposed to happen after powerhouse drummer and chief lyricist Neil Peart died.

When I say I'm not a Rush guy, it's complicated. There's a lot about the band I love, and some of it isn't even musical. They're charming, individually and collectively—the humor, the self-effacement, the genuine friendship between Peart, Alex Lifeson, and Geddy Lee that was visible in just about everything they did.

It's a triumphant story, but a tragic one too. Rush chose retirement after the R40 tour ended in August 2015, when Peart said his body was getting tired; those drum parts are enormously active, and they take a lot out of you. Then, not long after, he died, in January 2020. For fans, that was a cruel confirmation that it was really over. Rush was always three people and only three people. Peart wasn't even the original drummer—he joined for the second album—but he was so integral that even though they'd intentionally wound down, it didn't feel like closure.

It's tempting to look at bands and their members as math equations. Change one variable and the whole thing collapses. Sometimes that's true. I loved the original lineup of Jane's Addiction, which was over by 1991. There's been a zombie version of that band at various points since, but you can't replace the original bass player, Eric Avery. He's the gravitational field, and every reconstitution without him proved it by his absence. Led Zeppelin understood this when John Bonham died—they didn't even try to go forward, because they knew it wouldn't be the real deal.

Singers are somehow different. Melody might be more transferable than feel and time. But the rhythm section, a superlative drummer especially, is often where a band's secret identity dwells. Peart was the rhythmic and intellectual architecture of Rush, a huge part of what helped so many nerds feel secure in the worlds the band built. A million drummers can approximate the parts. What can't be replicated is the heart.

I saw the original band in Montreal, around the turn of the millennium. I was dragged along, skeptical, figuring they were already past their prime even then. A cynical American in a sea of dudes in hockey jerseys air-drumming every fill. But it was powerful stuff—three people making that much sound, with so much melody, polyrhythmic complexity, and intelligence between them. I could feel the devotion coming off the audience, and the band radiating it back. That, I figured, was the most irreplaceable thing. Could the bond be renewed after a decade away and the loss of a crucial member?

Enter 43 year-old German drummer Anika Nilles.

Nilles comes from a different lineage than Peart—Jeff Porcaro of Toto, Carter Beauford of the Dave Matthews Band, Prince. She's not really a prog person, though she's an excellent rock-fusion drummer, which is why she spent time in Jeff Beck's band. (Beck always hired great players, often women.) The point is that she comes to the Rush catalog without a lot of preconceptions. She knows she has to get the fills right—thousands will be playing along—but she doesn't so much imitate as reflect her own musicality inside the arrangements.

Nilles talks about the yikes moments—songs like "Tom Sawyer," where she felt the weight of getting it right. And she does. She also invests the music with something it never quite had: groove and breathability. Her playing is powerful and clear, so I actually hear Peart's parts better now. Best is how she swings within her predecessor’s fussy patterns. Which lets Lee and Lifeson loosen up, too. The stick, at last, is out of this band’s ass. (Sorry, Professor.)

Nobody expects new stuff from Rush at this point, and the lyrical question is a hard one to solve. But Anika frees them from needing to be Rush a certain way. What I'm seeing isn't the ghoulish presentation of so many legacy bands, and it isn't a tribute act. It’s a band transformed by loss and somehow more itself for it.

One likes to believe in the freedom of music, and 2026 Rush confirms it’s still possible.