The new Rush album, Clockwork Angels, is out today. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m a Rush fanatic. I have all the albums so far on CD – except for the latest, which I’m listening to on Spotify. It’ll be in my hands eventually, though.

This is a band that’s been around, still making music, for most of the past 40 years. They’ve shifted styles for each decade, never going on hiatus, never doing a “comeback” tour.

Well, there was one major hiatus, and I think they had a good excuse: The drummer, Neil Peart, lost his daughter to a car accident and his wife to cancer, both within a year. He retired from the band, and took a mostly-solo tour on a motorcycle 55,000 miles around the Americas to collect himself, and wrote a book about it. If that’s not a bad-ass, Joseph-Campbellian response to personal tragedy, I don’t know what is. Though that epic trek, he found a new wife, reconnected with himself and family, and came back to the band.

And if that weren’t enough, he came back better than ever and the band blew the roof off Vapor Trails with the first track, One Little Victory:

So, today is Rush day.