After two successful albums that broke the band away from their mid-70's prog era, the band decided that another change was in order because they didn't want to do Moving Pictures 2. The main element of this change was an increased keyboard presence. Of course, the band had been integrating keyboards into their sound since 1977 (and even on 2112) in earnest, but Signals marked the point where the keyboards started to become the main instrument that drowned out everything else.
At first, the keyboards weren't a problem. In fact, I rank Signals and its follow-up as two of the better albums Rush has produced. But in 1982 Lifeson's guitar was a bit marginalized. And being a guitarist myself, I think that was a problem.
Not only was the guitar essentially phased out of the mix, it wasn't really doing much in most of the songs. True, there's a great solo in "The Analog Kid", but aside from that and maybe "The Weapon", there aren't a lot of exciting moments on guitar.
But like I said above, that doesn't affect the quality of Signals as an album, because it is excellently written. It's also a bit darker in tone than Moving Pictures, which isn't a bad thing by any means. Although I love Moving Pictures, it can be a very bright album, and Signals muddies the water in a satisfying way. And to be fair, the different guitar accents and textures used on this album help make it sound the way it does. If Lifeson had been going at it like a guitar hero (basically, "The Analog Kid" the whole way through), Signals would be a very different album.
Would it have been better? Maybe. But I don't see how it could be improved upon in more than a minute way.
I think the success of Signals proved that this direction was viable, but the band had not sacrificed their songwriting chops or musicianship, although it could be argued that the arrangements are a bit more pedestrian. The next album would provide much of the same content, but with a slightly higher emphasis on guitar that was lacking here.
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Next time: further forays into electronic instrumentation.
