PERMANENT WAVZ

Envy of None guitarist Alex Lifeson brings his prodigious chops back to the forefront on the band's sophomore release, Stygian Wavz. Plus, a new Rush box set, hangin' with Geddy Lee, Lerxst gear and more

- ANDREW DALY

WHEN RUSH CAME off the road in 2015, Alex Lifeson's interest in guitar waned. And when Rush drummer Neil Peart died of cancer nearly five years later, Lifeson entered a period of mourning, meaning guitar completely took a backseat. But things began to change when fellow Canadian (and Coney Hatch bassist) Andy Curran reached out to Lifeson, asking him to provide scratch guitar tracks to help bring a few of his skeletal compositions to life. At first, Lifeson thought nothing of it; soon, however, a new band - Envy of None - was born.

Lifeson says he was reticent during the recording of the band's self-titled first album back in 2022, which led him to take something of a six-string backseat and focus on creating sounds that "didn't sound like a guitar." Call it a case of easing into things after spending most of his adult life beside Rush's Peart and Geddy Lee, who he considers his brothers. But nothing could change the fact that Rush was over.

"You can't change the past," Lifeson says. This meant that if Envy of None were to make a second album, he'd have to dive in, take the training wheels off and let it rip.

The story of Tom Lieber, the aspiring guitar builder who wouldn't take no for an answer and ended up making prized instruments for the Grateful Dead. Lifeson did just that, as heard on 2025's Stygian Wavz, an album that, for a time, didn't even appear to be in the cards. "I didn't expect, really, to make a second record after the first one, which was just an exercise more than anything," Lifeson says. "But this album has got our soul in it. We're not just a group of musicians in some sort of co-op unit. We're functioning like a band, we sound like a band, and that was the result of being freer and more open, which you can do on a sophomore record."