Rock Band Download Low-Down: Week 45

Each week we’ll run out onto our website stage like roadies and review the latest Rock Band Downloadable Content. Check back every week! (And click here for all of our previous music DLC reviews.)

*NOTE: Each of the songs in this week’s selection is available for 160 Microsoft Points ($2). They are also available as a full-album download for 880 points ($11).

Moving Pictures by Rush (1981, 7 downloadable tracks)

WHAT ROCKS: Prog rock’s towering trio is back with more master tracks — all seven songs from Moving Pictures, the album that brought them mainstream success a quarter-century ago. Our favorite tunes — “YYZ,” “Red Barchetta,” and “Limelight” — are incredibly fun for guitar, bass, and drums, with really active, really challenging lines that’ll thrill almost anyone, even borderline Rush fans who just want to test their virtuosity. We’d pay the $11 for these three tracks alone, but “Vital Signs” and “Tom Sawyer” are definitely fun, too, if not quite as head-splodingly awesome.

This album’s also a great one for use with the Rock Band Stage Kit — particularly “Witch Hunt,” which, when played in concert, is accompanied by plenty of smoke and pyrotechnics to suit the song’s spooky atmosphere. With the Stage Kit, the fog machine shoots into overdrive, churning for practically the whole song. After Corey and Ryan finished the track, they stumbled out of OXM’s Rock Band room like two stoners exiting a smoke-filled VW van. Now that’s rock!

WHAT SUCKS: “Sucks” is way too strong a word; let’s just say that on vocals, these tracks aren’t as fun as some of our other favorites: Geddy Lee’s high notes can be hard to hit, and the super-long “Camera Eye” has stretches where both singer and bassist have nothing to do. (Not to mention “YYZ,” which, as an instrumental, has no vocals at all.) Actually, the vocalist has four (!) separate mic-tapping segments to fill the dead space in “Camera Eye,” but do you really want to do that much tapping?

On a more hardcore note, we also wish that the version of “Witch Hunt” was the one from Rush’s live “Show of Hands” album — a slightly faster rendition with a short-but-sweet guitar solo added near the end. The version here isn’t bad, but it’s a bit slow and ponderous compared to the other six songs.

FINAL VERDICT: As much as we love listening to them, “Camera Eye” and “Witch Hunt” are only so-so playable tracks, and cover versions of “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight” have long been available to Rock Band owners (the first being part of the original game). But the high points of this album are awesome enough to overshadow these faults, and it's great to have master tracks of all seven songs. We’re giving it an unqualified recommendation for Rush fans, and for everyone else, we’d say that the best tracks more than warrant the $11 purchase.