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*** Geddy Lee

MY FAVOURITE HEADACHE

(Atlantic)

Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus was behind the times when he asked, “What about the voice of Geddy Lee — how did it get up so high?” As any Rush fan knows, Lee developed a deeper register years ago, just as Rush stopped writing sci-fi epics and started deliverýng more-concise, melody-driven songs. The band have been sidelined for three years (they’re set to return to the studio in 2001), but singer/bassist Lee has done what amounts to the next Rush album on his own. Even though this is his lyric-writing debut (usually drummer Neil Peart’s department), he makes no attempt to break away from the familiar format. The tunes are right up Rush’s catchy-yet-complicated alley: ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron apes Peart’s style (though he’s not quite as deft with the polyrhythms), and Ben Mink, usually k.d. lang’s collaborator, plays the kind of parts Alex Lifeson would (though Mink does them on violin as well as guitar).

The resemblance is fine, because Rush were close to a peak when they took their break. The title track is typical of what they were coming up with — alternating funky, Primus-like verses with a pretty bridge and prog-rock instrumental flourishes, it’s three good songs rolled into one. Elsewhere, Lee keeps things more basic. “Runaway Train” and “The Present Tense” offer a thinking person’s version of power-trio rock. Only “The Angel’s Share,” which uses Mink’s strings for psychedelic effect, goes into non-Rush territory. This outfit can’t play its way around a dodgy song as well as Rush can, so nothing much happens when Lee doesn’t come up with a hook. But his average is high, and fans will be glad to know that his lyrics include the same kind of five-dollar rhymes (“nihilistic” with “realistic”) and philosophical musings that Peart’s do.

— Brett Milano