![]() ![]() Strangelove-referencing video, featuring a child sitting astride a missile, ran with the brief wholeheartedly. Mere weeks before Grace Under Pressure’s release, Nena’s English-language version of the talismanic “99 Luftballoons” was still at No.1 in the UK singles charts – a sweetly-intentioned zeitgeist-capturer that expressed the nuclear paranoia which was a literal hot-button topic in one of the Cold War’s chilliest eras.Īlbum opener “Distant Early Warning” is an illustrative case in point: a dystopia travelogue, pitted with acid rain, which deftly nests parental concerns about an offspring’s vulnerability to malign influences (“You sometimes drive me crazy/But I worry about you”) within a more general disquisition about powerlessness in the faces of imminent ruination. What roots the album so tantalizingly in the mid-80s, more than all the chorus and flanger pedals, synths, electronic percussion, and headless Steinberger basses combined, is the reflexive gloom of drummer Neil Peart’s embattled, fretful lyrics. Grace Under Pressure was accordingly released on April 12, 1984, just one month after the sessions concluded: if it now sounds of its time, it does so in the most evocative, head-swimming way. Henderson stepped into the breach after plans to work with Steve Lillywhite fell through: a fortnight before recording was due to begin, Lillywhite controversially opted to produce Simple Minds’ Sparkle In The Rain instead.Īfter a reportedly galvanizing period of pre-production, recording took place in Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec, between November 1983 and March 1984. Production duties this time round ended up being split between the band themselves and engineer Peter Henderson, chiefly noted for having produced, engineered, and mixed Supertramp’s multi-platinum behemoth, Breakfast In America. ![]() Keen to explore the potential of stirring fresh blood into the stock, the band amicably parted ways with their long-time producer Terry Brown, who had manned the studio for every Rush album since 1975’s Fly By Night. ![]() A certain “new broom” mentality informed Grace Under Pressure’s genesis. ![]()
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