Hemispheres

Rush went back to Rockfield after A Farewell to Kings, but this time they arrived without finished songs and spent two weeks in a nearby farmhouse writing. Recording ran through June and July 1978, the longest the band had yet spent on an album. Vocals were recorded at Advision in London, and after problems with the mix the band returned to London in August to finish it at Trident Studios. Terry Brown co-produced and Pat Moran engineered. The album cost an estimated 100,000 Canadian dollars. Lee found the vocal keys so difficult that he sings very high.

Side one is Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres, an 18-minute sequel to the cliffhanger that closed A Farewell to Kings, in which the gods Apollo and Dionysus are caught in a struggle between mind and heart. Side two has Circumstances, The Trees, a parable Peart described as being about collectivism, and La Villa Strangiato, the band's first instrumental. It has twelve sections and took as many as forty takes to get down.

The album reached number fourteen in both Canada and Britain and number forty-seven in the United States. It was platinum in Canada and gold in the United States by mid-December 1978. The shorter songs on side two gave the band wider FM radio exposure.