by Steven McDonald

Rush is an excellent dark blues score written by Eric Clapton (with help on the three songs) and performed by an augmented version of his band. This soundtrack album produced one big hit for Clapton with "Tears in Heaven," but it's a wonderfully intense piece of work all the way through, with some terrific guitar work from Clapton himself. Buddy Guy turns up to add lead vocals and guitar on the 11-minute version of Willie Dixon's "Don't Know Which Way to Go," and that's more than all right too. There's a very good chance that the dark intensity of this music was as much informed by the tragedies in Clapton's life ("Tears in Heaven" is about his son) as the film itself. Whatever the cause, this album has far more impact than you might expect from the score to a movie -- there's a sense of the music here working something out in Clapton's heart, a sense given a lot of power thanks to the intense, heart-wrenching passion invoked by some of the turns taken here. At its best, Clapton's music can speak of the pain he feels -- and Clapton has rarely been better than he is here.