Some bands hit the ground running on their debut albums, and others still sound like a work in progress. Nobody could predict what Rush would be capable of three years after its first full-length, let alone 40 years later, which in a way makes this innocuous little record all the more fascinating. Its legacy is nowhere near as towering as 2112 and Moving Pictures, and it’s often a forgotten album in the Rush discography because it’s the only record to not feature the classic lineup of Lee, Lifeson, and Peart. Yet for all its flaws, there’s a charm to it, and given time — it took decades for yours truly to warm to it — it turns out to be a very likeable album.

By the time they headed into Toronto’s Eastern Sound Studios in 1973, recording on the cheap after hours, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and John Rutsey were veterans of the local rock scene, their many live performances honing their heavy rock sound, which translated very well on the self-titled album, which boasts the kind of robust tone that any aspiring heavy rock band hopes to pull off on its first effort. As confident as Rush is — a good deal of credit goes to young studio whiz Terry Brown, who presided over the later recording sessions — and as rare as it was for a Canadian band to explore the grittier, heavier side of rock at the time, it remains a very derivative album, the band shamelessly paying homage to Cream and Led Zeppelin, with Lifeson’s riffs echoing Clapton and Page, Lee’s chirpy voice coming across as a more polite, less cocksure Robert Plant. At its worst, which is nearly all of side one, its reliance on cliché is awkward: Lee’s faux-American twang on “Take A Friend” is so obvious it’s distracting, “Here Again” is tepid rather than slow-burning, while “Need Some Love” shows how badly the band needed a lyricist.

At its best, however, Rush is a scorching little rock ‘n’ roll record with surprising musical depth. With its marvelous, nimble fade-in intro by Lifeson, “Finding My Way” is a rambunctious way for Rush to introduce itself, its tone a lot more upbeat and optimistic despite the ominous, blues-derived lyrics. “What You’re Doing” boasts a colossal groove, whose power would be amplified tenfold on the 1976 live album All The World’s A Stage. Although hearing Lee sing, “Well-a hey now, baybeh,” on “In The Mood” makes this writer smirk to this day, it remains a cute, quaint little garage rock tune. “Before And After,” on the other hand, is an oft-overlooked highlight, bolstered by a gorgeous, pastoral first half that hints at musical territory Rush would explore on A Farewell To Kings three short years later.

The debut album’s pinnacle is the final track, as “Working Man” swaggers in with a colossal heavy metal riff courtesy of Lifeson. Its lyrical simplicity (“I get up at seven, yeah/ And I go to work at nine/ I got no time for livin’/ Yes, I’m workin’ all the time”) is the one moment where it actually works. After all, blue-collar rock requires blue-collar lyrics, and it’s rather fitting that the place where Rush got its first big break would happen to be working class Cleveland, who quickly embraced the track when it started spinning on WMMS radio. That popularity would in turn lead to the album’s re-release in the United States, and better yet, loads of tour dates south of the border.

Unfortunately for Rutsey, the combination of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and his diabetes contributed to his deteriorating health in early 1974, and with Rush’s greatly increased commitments it quickly became clear he couldn’t continue at that pace. The band needed a replacement, and they’d find one in the parts manager at a tractor dealer in St. Catharines, Ontario. Enter the Professor, and the rest, as they say, would be history.