Snakes and Arrows

Snakes & Arrows is the eighteenth full-length studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush. It was released on May 1, 2007.

On March 12, 2007, the band unveiled a new website at the official Rush website, primarily to promote the album. The first single from the album, "Far Cry", was posted as on-demand streaming audio on this site at that time. The band also announced that the single was being released to North American radio stations. On May 8, 2007, the band announced the release of a video for "Far Cry", and on June 1, 2007, "Spindrift" was released to radio stations as the album's official second single. In promotion of Snakes & Arrows, Rush kicked off their planned intercontinental tour on June 13, 2007 in Atlanta Georgia, which is set to run through October and cover most of North America and Europe. The third single for the album, "The Larger Bowl" was released in late July to North American radio where it has been positioned within the top 30 of the Mainstream Rock and Media Base Mainstream charts.

The album debuted at number three on the U.S. Billboard 200, selling about 93,000 copies in its first week. These figures only reflect sales of the CD version of the album, and do not include the MVI or LP versions.

Writing for Snakes & Arrows began in January 2006 with bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson working at their home studio in Toronto. The pair began the writing process by jamming, which gradually molded their ideas into completed pieces. During this process, drummer Neil Peart wrote preliminary lyrics for the songs – a creative method the band has employed frequently on their earlier works. Peart, originally from the Toronto area, has lived in Southern California since 2000. To continue working with his bandmates for the new album, he commuted to Ontario and New York throughout the writing and recording phases. When Peart was in California, the band occasionally collaborated over the Internet.

By March 2006, rough versions of six songs had been completed. The three band members met in Quebec to listen to the material recorded thus far. In May 2006, they refined the songs in a small professional studio in Toronto. After the first six songs were recorded, the band set out to write and record additional songs in September.

American producer Nick Raskulinecz, famous for his work with the Foo Fighters, was hired to assist the band in producing the album. Raskulinecz, a self-proclaimed fan of the band, reportedly encouraged the band members to explore the limits of their renowned talents and enthusiastically encouraged the band to incorporate the complex rhythmic and melodic patterns that characterized their earlier works. For the engineering of the album, Raskulinecz used vintage microphones for several applications. The final mix of the album was recorded at Allaire Studios in Shokan, New York; mixed by Richard Chycki at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles, California; engineered by Richard Chycki; and mastered by Brian Gardner.

Neil Peart's customary essay on the writing and recording of the album, called The Game of Snakes and Arrows, has been released on the Rush website.

Peart, the band's primary lyricist, has stated the lyrical theme of the album is based on his personal reflections on faith, inspired by his motorcycle journeys through North America. Many of the experiences mentioned in the lyrics of Snakes & Arrows evolved from Peart's memoirs from his most recent book: Roadshow: Landscape With Drums, A Concert Tour By Motorcycle.

According to Lifeson, musical themes for the album were written and developed using acoustic guitars to work out the major parts. These parts were ultimately recorded using acoustic or electric guitars, or other instruments. Lifeson found that writing the songs on acoustic guitars provided a certain purity, assisting him in conceiving the instrumental parts. Both he and Lee used this as an alternative to more traditional methods of song development, which saw the use of amplified electric guitars and the assistance of electronic instruments. David Gilmour is credited in the liner notes because he inspired Lifeson to write songs mostly on acoustic guitar. According to an interview Lifeson did for the June 2007 issue of GuitarOne Magazine, Lifeson was at a concert at Toronto's Massey Hall during Gilmour's On an Island tour where they were able to meet.

According to Lee:

It's hard to describe. It's big, it's bold, and I think it's some of the best work we've done in years. I'm really pleased with the quality of the songs, and there's lots of playing on it... Playing those songs [from Feedback] that we loved and grew up on, I think it helped us remember how sometimes it's the simplicity or the directness of an arrangement that really makes a great song. And the other thing is, we played all together in the studio for a lot of the Feedback stuff. That's something that a lot of producers had been pushing us to do for a while but which we hadn't done in years. It was great to turn off the click and just play — you know, not worry so much about being so, quote, metronomic — and that definitely carried over into this record. – Geddy Lee, interview with Revolver Magazine.