Rush's Alex Lifeson Teases New Project Envy of None

A 10-song release could arrive this fall, says the guitarist

Photo: Epiphone

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Jul 8, 2021

In June, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson shared a pair of new songs, marking his first solo material in over two decades. Now, it's been revealed that there's more where "Kabul Blues" and "Spy House" came from, with a new project dubbed Envy of None.

Rush fan site cygnus-x1.net points out that the reveal initially came from bassist Andy Curran (Coney Hatch), who shared with Ultimate Classic Rock last month that Lifeson and himself are joined in the group by guitarist Alfio Annibalini and vocalist Maiah Wynne, with additional musical contributions coming from drummers Tim Oxford (Arkells) and David Quinton Steinberg (Dead Boys, the Mods).

Curran explained to UCR that he had been at work on material with vocalist Wynne, which Lifeson expressed interest in hearing. Curran said he told the Rush six-stringer, "If you hear anything, why don't you play on it?."

From there, Lifeson "played on one track and one became two, and two became three," Curran noted. "Now we have 10 songs in the can with this project called Envy of None."

Curran described the material sent to Lifeson as "trippy and dark" with "pop elements," but told the publication, "it's not Rush and it's not Coney Hatch."

"It's like, if you can picture maybe Massive Attack with a little bit of some electronic stuff with Nine Inch Nails influences, with this beautiful, fragile, sweet voice and some very, very dark heavy sounds. That's kind of what this project sounds like," he shared.

In a separate interview published last week with Grateful Web, Lifeson shared that a 10-song release from Envy of None could be months away: 

Well, we are in the mixing stages, and we're actually in the final mixing stage of this project. We've been living with some monitor mixes for a little while and going back and forth and updating things until we finally reach the stage as to what we would refer to as "final mixes." I think we're probably about a month or so away from what we would consider "final mixes," and we're not sure where we are going to go in terms of release, but the general idea is to release by the fall. We have 10 songs, everything is recorded, we're just getting a couple final things from Maiah, but we're in really good shape it's just a matter of sliding them in.

Envy of None are sure to update listeners on new music through recently launched Facebook and Twitter profiles. Outside of this project, Lifeson recently shared that he was "eager" to write new music with Rush bandmate and friend Geddy Lee.

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