Permanent Waves

After the Hemispheres tour the band took a break, then worked up new material at Lakewoods Farm near Flesherton, Ontario. The songs were shorter and more direct, and the band tried them out in a warm-up tour in August and September 1979, which was a first for them. They recorded from September at Le Studio in Morin-Heights with Terry Brown and the engineer Paul Northfield, and finished the mix at Trident Studios in London. Hugh Syme played piano on Different Strings, which Lee wrote the words for. Peart said the title was a joke about the music press, which was quick to write off any band that had been around the week before.

The album opens with The Spirit of Radio and Freewill, and closes with the nine-minute Natural Science, the one song written in the studio. It reached number three in Canada and Britain and number four in the United States, and was gold by March 1980. It was the fastest-selling Rush album to that point. The tour, from January to June 1980, was the first to turn a profit for the band.