Permanent Waves is the seventh studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush, released on January 14, 1980. It marked a departure in the band's musical style towards tighter song structures and songs more suitable for radio airplay. Permanent Waves became Rush's first US Top 5 album hitting #4 on the Billboard 200 and their fifth gold (later platinum) selling album.
The album was recorded at Le Studio, located in the scenic Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, with production handled by long-time collaborator Terry Brown. The album incorporates more traditional song structures compared to their previous records, with a progressive new wave style being adopted. This creative shift was largely influenced by the changing musical landscape at the end of the 70s.
The album incorporates reggae and new wave elements into Rush's unique blend of hard rocking progressive music. Lyrically, Neil Peart's themes in this album encompass politics ("The Spirit of Radio" and "Free Will"), science fiction ("Natural Science"), societal surges ("Entre Nous"), love ("Different Strings"), and music itself ("Freewill"). A standout track is "The Spirit of Radio" which became one of Rush's most loved songs and received heavy radio airplay.
The cover art also has been equally intriguing, credited to longtime Rush album jacket designer Hugh Syme; an homage to the "Dewey Defeats Truman" incident. The “Permanent Waves” album has since been perceived by fans and critics alike as one of Rush's finest, marking the start of the band's most prolific and popular era. It holds an important place in Rush's discography as an album that successfully bridged their earlier hard-rock and progressive style to the more accessible approach they took in the 80s.
