Touring hard in support of the hard-earned breakthrough 2112 album, with a live album put out as a stopgap release, it took a year and a half for the follow-up to see the light of day. When it hit stores in September of 1977, the Rush fans heard on A Farewell To Kings was a transformed band bursting at the seams with new ideas. The band could have milked the prog-meets-heavy metal formula of 2112 successfully, but Lee, Lifeson, and Peart were all showing incredible growth as musicians, and A Farewell To Kings was the first tentative step towards the full-on experimentation that would come into full bloom in the 1980s.

Significant changes were afoot, which you can immediately sense on this album. Peart’s drum kit was expanding as he started to explore keyboard percussion such as tubular bells and orchestra bells. Lifeson started incorporating more non-hard rock/metal elements into his guitar work, while Lee was discovering keyboards, using Minimoog and bass synthesizer pedals on the record. In addition, the band headed to England to record the album, hoping to draw inspiration from the flourishing progressive rock scene there, and that pastoral element dominates the entire record — from Lifeson’s acoustic interludes, to the emphasis on lilting, folk-derived melodies, to the marked emphasis on atmosphere over sheer force.

Hearing the three members step completely outside their comfort zones on the title track that kicks off the album — Lifeson on classical guitar, Lee on synthesizer, Peart on glockenspiel — the prevailing sense on the track is one of elegance, even during the heavier power trio parts. It’s uplifting, downright pretty, even. “Cinderella Man” and “Madrigal” would continue into this decidedly English direction, as would an innocuous little ballad that would be the band’s biggest-charting single in North America, and more significantly, its first breakthrough in the UK. With its instantly memorable melody and uplifting lyrics by Peart and his friend Peter Talbot, “Closer To The Heart” finds Rush utilizing the same formula as “Fly By Night” three years earlier, but streamlining it. The band was learning to blend its quirky style within the pop milieu, and that song is a perfect example, one of the band’s most enduring singles and now regarded as one of the best Canadian songs of all time.

Make no mistake, however, Rush was still very much ensconced in its epic progressive rock direction on A Farewell To Kings, only compared to 2112 there’s a great deal more nuance, thanks in large part to the band’s newfound mastery of program music. Utilizing the time-honored classical tradition of creating atmosphere via musical instruments — albeit in the rock genre — the album’s two lengthy tracks show remarkable depth and growth, with one in particular going on to be one of Rush’s greatest compositions of all time.

As mildly intriguing as the sci-fi epic “Cygnus X-1 Book I: The Voyage” is, it’s dwarfed by the towering “Xanadu.” Opening with a gorgeous, abstract intro of synth drones, playful guitar notes, wood blocks, bells, and chirping birds, the Coleridge-referencing “Xanadu” transports the listener into fantasy territory, and when Lifeson’s repeated arpeggio riff kicks in, the feeling is positively cinematic. When the song kicks into gear at the three-minute mark, it’s clear the band has never sounded this musically complex and concise. Lifeson’s guitar playing is multihued, Peart’s fills are increasingly busy, and Lee’s synths become a focal point for the first time in the band’s career. Yet as instrumentally challenging it is, as unorthodox in structure, it’s a relentlessly catchy piece of work, matching “2112” step for step, albeit in half the time.

Even more impressive would be how Rush pulled off a song like “Xanadu” in a live setting, with Peart behind his increasingly elaborate kit, Lifeson on double-necked 12 and six-string guitar, and Lee on double-necked four-string bass and 12-string guitar, not to mention his Minimoog synth and bass pedals. And indeed, demand for this now firmly established live band grew a great deal after the release of A Farewell To Kings, especially in the UK in the wake of the success of “Closer To The Heart.” Contrary to popular opinion today, progressive rock was doing just fine in punk-dominated 1977, thank you very much, and A Farewell To Kings would influence a generation of young British musicians who would soon comprise the equally epochal New Wave of British Heavy Metal a couple years later.

By late 1977 Rush was in full flight, a resounding commercial success despite near-total apathy from critics (“The most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit,” opined Robert Christgau that year). A Farewell To Kings was certified gold in America two months after its release, with 2112 and the All The World’s A Stage live album achieving similar status shortly after. There was no looking back now, and Rush would pull out all the stops on an astounding follow-up, one that many fans claim is one of the band’s pinnacle achievements, but one the members would say nearly came at the cost of their own sanity.