September 2, 2026
Rush stun Montreal with a phenomenal performance
I vividly remember being 15 years old in 1998, getting into Rush around the time Different Stages was released. It seemed so final. A band on hiatus or maybe done altogether, releasing a retrospective live album.
That same feeling was shared by Rush fans around the globe under a year ago. The feeling that Rush was over. Both Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson themselves had declared it publicly. They had lost Neil Peart to the same brain cancer that had taken Gord Downie a few years earlier. It didn’t even need to be said. They had an incredible 40-year career, bonded like brothers. But everything has to come to an end. They decided they couldn’t replace the irreplaceable. Everyone respected their decision, which seemed to be the most obvious one.
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Geddy wrote his memoirs. Alex formed another band. The two of them occasionally got together to jam Rush songs, insisting it sounded like a “bad Rush tribute band.” They seemed at peace with their respective versions of retirement.
But unbeknownst to us mere mortals not in their inner circle, phone calls were being made. Geddy’s tech “Skully” had found a German drummer who had played with Jeff Beck. He liked what he saw. So did Alex. Flights were booked, and they were all in a room together, to see if the seemingly impossible could be possible. It was. A tour was booked. And then last October, it went public. The unthinkable had happened. Rush were back.
Some fans were skeptical, as are fans of any band where there are lineup changes this late in the game. But most were far too excited to care. Anika Nilles was Jeff Beck’s drummer on his final tour. Solid credentials. Green light.
Logistics beckon. How do you put a setlist together? Do you play what you want to play, or what your fans want to hear? Is there much overlap in that Venn diagram? A band with such a vast catalogue as Rush had been presented this challenge for decades. Some tours saw them playing more of their “old” stuff. Sometimes it was more the ‘80s “synth” era. Sometimes their new album was strong and featured heavily, like with Snakes And Arrows. And in 2015 it was a brilliantly choreographed backwards chronological trip from what ended up being their final album to their debut.
Rush has no hits. Not really, anyway. New World Man was a moderate hit, but nobody’s really thinking about that. Rush aren’t a singles band. They are an albums band. They didn’t ever chase commerciality. They chased the idea of genuinely expressing what they were experiencing as they grew as artists and people. This isn’t Bon Jovi where there are a whole bunch of songs that would have 99% of the audience protesting if they didn’t hear them. Apart from Tom Sawyer and The Spirit of Radio, you’re rolling the bones. Every Rush fan in every arena has their opinion on what the perfect setlist would be, so not everyone could be a hundred percent pleased. But every night they’re playing for nearly three hours, so no one in their right mind could even consider being disappointed. These guys are in their seventies. An opening band and a 90-minute show with with the same 15 songs every night would have been deemed more than acceptable. But Rush have never been a band to do things in halves.
The anticipation to their first four dates in L.A. was palpable, free of internet spoilers. And they did not disappoint — they have over 40 songs in the arsenal, which is impressive for any touring act, let alone one playing music of this complexity. A dozen tunes each night are static, and the band are generously rotating between another thirty. Anyone seeing them on multiple nights is sure to be the beneficiaries of very different shows.
The 1976-84 period is three quarters of the show, and on this particular night in Montreal there was just song from the last 30 years. They know when their creative peak was. But every Rush album from the mid-’80s onward has a few great tracks, and many of those songs are peppered into their sets. They’ve never done this before. And the production is immense, so this must have taken a year to put together. How many bands have smoke bombs going off in 7/8 time? Everything about this show is beautiful. But the setlist and even the production are secondary to the occasion itself. How improbable it is that this was happening at all. If there’s a happier story in the world of music in 2026, someone please tell me what it is.
The first set included three of their most beloved epics: Xanadu, La Villa Strangiato, and Natural Science. After seventy-five minutes it was intermission. A clock on the screen counted down from 23 minutes, and right on cue there was a quick cheer for the one second that it was at 21:12. Rush fans truly are a special and dedicated bunch.
And then the second set began with the complete 2112 suite, which hadn’t been heard live in nearly 30 years before this tour. They play it every second night.
Replacing band members is never easy. Of all the people who’ve had to replace all the band members for all the reasons under the sun, I’ve never seen someone so heartily embraced as Anika Nilles. She has been so completely accepted into the fold by band and audience alike. It was ovation after ovation, and probably never louder than after the iconic fill in Tom Sawyer, which lasted the entirety of the next verse.
Tributes to master skinsman Neil Peart were aplenty during the show, from the photo montage during Bravado to audio segments of his voice between songs that illustrated his thoughtful mind and character. Geddy multiple times pointed to his beloved drummer’s philosophical lyrics when introducing pieces like Freewill and The Garden. And original drummer John Rutsey was given his due by the encore when they did songs from their earliest days.
Geddy has credited his vocal coach Mitch Seekins for much of the improvement in his voice compared to previous tours. I’ve seen Rush at nearly every opportunity since 2002, and this may well have been the best he’s sounded in a quarter century. These are not easy songs to sing — and most of them are still in their original keys. He nailed Limelight and Red Barchetta with conviction. These guys are not phoning it in. But no doubt having Loren Gold covering most of the keyboard parts has Geddy feeling much more relaxed this time around.
Closer to the Heart saw Geddy with his “teardrop” bass, seen on this tour for the first time since December 31, 1980 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto when he joined Max Webster to perform Battle Scar. Alex Lifeson introduced the following song as something “close to my lungs,” and launched intoA Passage to Bangkok, a song all about the sweet stuff that Alex has actually quit to help him get through this tour in the best of health. He has been dealing with arthritis for about 20 years, and you would never know it with the quality of his playing every night.
Nilles notably isn’t a carbon copy of Peart. She learned her 40+ songs and has been given the grace to play them organically in her own style. There is no shortage of drummers who know this music note for note, but Geddy and Alex didn’t want someone who would be suitable for a Rush tribute band.
Technical ability is not all that they were looking for.
The gig is 3 hours long. But a day is 24 hours long, and the remaining 21 hours are spent on the bus, in airports, at the hotel, backstage. The hang. The fun. The laughs. The waiting. The uncomfortable pauses. This is the part of touring that most people do not see or even think about. And if you’re looking for the right person to tour the world with for a year, the personality match is paramount, and at least as important as the musical match. They chose Anika not only for her chops and musical sensibility — they chose her because they like spending time with her. There is little doubt that Geddy and Alex agonized over this part of their decision even more than the musical side of things. And perhaps must crucially, it seems they wanted someone who wasn’t a Rush fan — someone who might fawn over them and have even the slightest chance of cultivating a hierarchy with a master/servitude dynamic. They wanted someone who would not only do the job and be a solid hang, but someone they could get along with as equals. The smiles they exchange throughout each concert are seen in thousands of YouTube videos. It is all pure and genuine.
Every night Anika plays a practical joke on her bandmates before the final button of Working Man. Humour is central to the Rush universe, as it offsets the intensity of so much of their music. Anika checks all the boxes that matter most.
Concerts can be both a shared and a personal experience. The house lights going dark make the latter that much more possible, particularly when things become emotional. Music connects with us in so many differently profound ways. Time Stand Still is played every night, no doubt because it means as much to the band as it does to the rest of us. There’s not a chance that I was the only person in tears listening to the words “freeze this moment a little bit longer” and “the innocence slips away” sung by an older Geddy Lee.
But with the way he was jumping around on stage, with the elasticity of someone half his age, you can see that plenty has not slipped away. Unlike a lot of similar nostalgia shows, this one is being
performed with peak musicality and physicality.
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By a certain point Neil Peart was very open about his distaste for the road life, and no doubt spent much the time yearning to be home with his wife and daughter. He had lost his first wife and a daughter in the 1990s within months of one another, and had won his second chance at happiness. He wanted to freeze those moments a little bit longer. Everyone seems to understand this now.
There will be many more moments for Rush fans and aficionados to freeze over these next six-plus months. The band’s tour itinerary will extend into spring 2027 as they return to South America for the first time in 25 years, and then Europe.
