All the World’s a Stage is my favorite but I think Hemispheres is their creative peak and Permanent Waves is their “refined” peak. I don’t really like anything after GUP. I only like GUP because of familiarity.
They kind of morphed into a pseudo-pop/soft-rock band. Geddy changed his singing style as well and it is not my cup of tea.
I listen to every new album with the hope that I will like it but so far that hasn’t happened.
After seeing a video for Caravan from their next CD I think I’m going to have to agree. Something happened, and to me it was before Grace Under Pressure. I didn’t like that one much either. The tone changed and Geddy’s singing style changed. I still love the music though and I’d rather listen to bad Rush than just about anything else.
I like everything from Caress Of Steel through Signals. I haven’t really enjoyed anything much after that. I do need to give some of their more recent stuff a shot though. I just dropped off the Rush map after Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows, Roll The Bones…I hated all of those albums.
I consider everything up to and including Power Windows to be gold; what Rush fan can’t like Marathon? Presto’s decent, there are a few good tunes on Test For Echo, and I really, really like three quarters of Snakes and Arrows, enough that I decided to see them on the second run of the tour ($125 for floor seats and an unobstructed view of Neil Peart for the whole show). They aren’t doing what they used to do, that’s for sure, but if listening to ‘The Main Monkey Business’ while driving doesn’t get you a speeding ticket you need either better taste in music or a faster car.
Hard to say what my favourite album is. Moving Pictures? Permanent Waves? Signals? Somewhere around there.
I admit I sort of drifted away from them during the Signals - Presto stretch, when Geddy started going really heavy on the synths. That period coincided neatly with my getting more into the likes of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Rush seemed to have gone all “new wave” on me right about the time I was developing an interest in heavier rock. I came back around the time of Roll the Bones and Counterparts, and now I can go back and play along with those “synthy” albums and enjoy myself, largely because I’m pretty much exclusively a bassist these days rather than a guitarist, and those albums are a lot of fun to play on bass.
What happened was he got older 
Seriously, though, it is a very rare male singer who can keep up the kind of singing Geddy did for very long. I can sing along all day with the stuff from, say, Hold Your Fire onward, but the farther back I go the faster my voice wears out. In last year’s documentary, Geddy himself admits that his vocals on Hemispheres were too high for him even at the time he wrote them.
I’m a woman and those older Rush songs with Geddy singing up in the stratosphere are hard for ME to hit, and I’m only 42 :0
I love the whole album. Especially side two, which has songs having nothing to do with the plot of the suite. It cannot be denied that Tears is the most beautiful song written by Rush. 
After seeing all of “Moving Pictures” done live last year, it’s become one of my favorites.
Moving pictures was the first Rush album I listened to, and it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. The atmosphere and feel of it were awesome, like rock music of the distant future, recorded in 1980. Being a budding bassist surely helped here, as the bass lines on that record are still mind-blowing. The only 10-minute song on it, The Camera Eye, is one of my all time favorites - truly uplifting music, even though I think Rush’s move to a shorter song format was one of their best decisions.
Many people bash the synth-heavy pop albums Rush made in the mid-80’s, but to me they are in a way the best stuff Rush ever did. Many of the earlier songs were somewhat clunky, shrieky and angular, but the musicianship and songwriting gelled into effortless beauty with Power Windows and Hold Your Fire, the latter being a flawless intello-pop rock album and my second pick off the Rush catalogue. Also, Geddy’s Wals sounded truly awesome - I’d love to see him pick them up again. Much tastier bass work than the recent gritty and fuzzy Jazz Bass stuff.
I’m surprised by Presto’s popularity here - to me it’s their lowpoint - fluffy, tired pop dreck with none of the depth and power of the previous records. Roll the Bones is similarly bad, what with it’s rap sections and cheap synth jabs. At that point, the shift back to guitar-driven rock was extremely welcome, even if I don’t listen to much of recent Rush.
Moving Pictures.