Alex Lifeson Discusses Envy of None’s New Album, Rush’s Music, and…Taylor Swift

And this is especially evident on their sophomore full-length, Stygian Waves, issued on March 28, 2025 via the Kscope label. Lifeson spoke to AllMusic shortly before the album’s release, and explained how it differs from the group’s first offering, in addition to chatting about songwriting, aspects of his personal life, and even a few Rush-related topics.

How would you compare Stygian Waves to Envy of None’s self-titled debut?

“The first album was very exploratory for us. We didn’t really know each other very well. I obviously knew Andy [who was previously a member of Canadian rockers Coney Hatch], but I didn’t know Alf that well, and I didn’t know Maiah at all. And we really came together and worked as a team on that nicely, remotely. So, we would share our files and all of that stuff. Well, we made the second record that way, too. And I think we benefited from the first record and getting to know each other a little bit better. And we started working on the record right after the first one was released, so we just flowed right into it.”

“I think that this record is more mature. It shows more confidence on our part. I think we achieved all the goals that we are after. It wasn’t so much of looking for things as it was once the ideas were set, then we just followed through. There’s more substance to this record.”

“I’m soloing more on this record, which is kind of a nice thing. It’s a little heavier, I think. It’s a little rockier in a way, but there’s also lots of cool, funky stuff. And I think the variety is good. The production has improved. Not that I had a problem with the production of the last record, but this record really sounds great. So, a wonderful record to listen to.”

“And then there’s Maiah. Maiah sits on top of everything else. She’s genius on this record, and she’s really matured as a vocalist, as a songwriter, a lyricist, and as a person. So, it’s been quite a quite an interesting journey for her in the last couple of years.”

Does the album title have a specific meaning?

‘No. Stygian waves are from mythology, and are the turbulent waves at the gates of hell. As you flow down the River Styx, as you approach the gates of hell, the water becomes much more turbulent and chaotic. And we like to think that there’s also a way to navigate out of those turbulent waters into something a little more calmer and positive.”

Two music videos have been issued thus far from the album, “Not Dead Yet” and “Under the Stars.”

“I’m not a singles guy, personally. But I understand that there’s some importance, and the record company feels it’s important to have singles and videos. So, ‘Not Dead Yet,’ we hired a videographer from Argentina to do the first video. It’s an AI generated video, but my understanding is a lot of work goes into it before it ever comes near a computer. So, this argument back and forth, I guess it’s a digital/analog argument at times, y’know, on steroids, but I think it looks amazing.”

“And this AI stuff is scary, but it looks amazing. It’s interesting to look at and watch. So, there’s so much activity in those videos. Those were the first tracks that we thought that we would release as singles. And the second video, for ‘Under the Stars,’ that’s a whole different approach.”

“But I guess they’re effective tools to take, get people’s attention for moments, but no one has an attention span anymore. Nobody really cares. So I just, I wonder about the whole thing. They’re fun to do and they’re fun to look at, but ultimately, are they much of a tool anymore? I’m really not sure. I’m not the one to ask…even though you asked me!”

I find the music of Envy of None to be quite cinematic sounding. Has the band pursued doing music for TV or film?

“We’ve tried very hard, and we did get a placement on the first album for the song ‘Liar’ on a Netflix series. The name [of the show] escapes me right now. Yeah, I think that that would be awesome, because I think this music is very cinematic and quite atmospheric. A lot of the material I think would fit great for, like, ‘Not Dead Yet,’ for the next Bond movie? Wow. What a great song that would be for the next Bond movie. And we have supervisors that hunt down those opportunities. So, hopefully something more will come of that. But I would love to get those sort of placements.”

It’s hard to compare the music of Envy of None to any specific other artist, which is a good thing. Are there any influences from other artists that you can think of?

“Well, I think there’s a comparison to Garbage, I guess, because Shirley [Manson] and Maiah are both women. But for me, no, I go into it just with a clear mind, working on these projects. And I look at them as challenging opportunities for me to play guitar in a different way than I’ve ever played it, and look for sounds that are very different than standard, traditional guitar sounds. So for me personally, it’s a really great exercise in exploration and expanding my boundaries.”

“If you ask the others that, I’m sure they would have their influences, but I really don’t know. Because we work on it fairly steadily, and we’re always focused on it. So you’re not getting in a lot of other outside influences, at least I don’t think so. Everybody doesn’t really want to copy something else. You want to be original. But certainly there are flavors of other things – there’s a ’60s vibe that I hear, there’s a ’90s vibe that I hear. We are sort of a little all over the map.”

“But I think we have a very unique combination in that we’re kind of old school musicians and we’re writing sort of, I would say, darker cinematic music. But with Maiah’s voice not being a ‘rock kind of voice’ and being quite fragile, it’s a really great contrast to what the music is, which is a little darker. So I think in that sense, it’s quite unique.

How do you approach Envy of None songs from a guitar standpoint?

“We get the basic thread of an idea. And usually they’re quite minimal. When it comes to me, I do scratch guitars, and I don’t do a lot of them, but I’ll do the thematic and maybe one secondary kind of guitar presence. And I don’t spend a whole lot of time. I usually just use plugins and try to get through it very spontaneously. And then it goes to Maiah and she’ll do a scratch vocal, and it comes back to me, and then I start doing the final guitars. And then I just break it down in sections between the verses and the choruses and bridges and any instrumental section – much like I would have done in the past with Rush music. I mean, that’s my formula for mapping things out.”

“And then I kind of dive into it. Sometimes, I start with an acoustic, and I do acoustic stuff that ultimately will be electric, but I find that I can get a little more organic with an acoustic at times. And I love playing acoustic guitar, anyways. So quite often with this record, that was a starting point for me, and invariably, that became a signature for another part, where it would go into an acoustic section, or at least supportive. And then I would start building the guitars, usually, y’ know, as you can see [shows a large collection of guitars behind him], I got all my stuff over here. Analog stuff, and the amps, and I have a cabinet that’s in an enclosure. So I like to do those things more analog.”

“But I also got, I don’t know if you’ve checked these out yet – this is the Universal Audio amp pedals that they have [Alex displays two pedal models: Lion ’68 and Enigmatic ’82]. They’re kind of new. They sound amazing! I’m a pedal guy for sure, but I’m not this kind of pedal guy – like, emulating guitar sounds. But I did the thing for the TONEX, where they did my whole catalog of amps. Oh, it’s incredible. And there’s a whole new generation, I guess it’s driven AI, a whole new generation of these kinds of things that truly emulate the guitar sound.”

“Digital guitar, like plugins, always sound like it’s taped onto the screen. It doesn’t have the depth – you don’t feel like it’s tall or deep or fat. And these pedals do it, and the TONEX does it, because they’ve done something about the bottom end of those plugins, which were lacking in the past. They seem to have conquered that obstacle. And now those pedals and those plugins like TONEX are an incredible step into making it much more convenient and still maintaining a great, great, great guitar sound.”

Do you think Envy of None may play some shows in support of the new album?

“Oh, we’d love to. We keep talking about it. I think that a night in a smallish theater with a nice, subtle light show with two albums worth of material would be a night of just beautiful, great, very emotional music. But, it’s difficult to get the logistics in place. These are very difficult, challenging times for us – to do a gig, or gigs, would be a financial loss. So, it’s hard to get motivated to spend a lot of time and effort to do something that it’s going to cost you to do it. At least those are the preliminary responses that that we’ve gotten. But we’re holding out hope that maybe there’s an opportunity to do even a handful of gigs as a kind of special musical event.”

Now that you haven’t toured for quite some time, how would you describe a typical day nowadays for you?

“I’m an early riser. I’m usually up between 5:30 and 6:30. I hit the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. At 9:00, I come back. This is my studio in my apartment, and I like to come back here and spend time here. It’s my sanctuary. And I never get bored in here. And there’s never nothing that I don’t want to do when I’m in here. So, I’ll spend time here.”

“I play a little bit of golf, and I was going to say some tennis occasionally. And I make my own food, I cook my own food. I’m very conscious about my diet and how I’m eating now, so that kind of fills my day. And once a week or so, I’ll drop by Ged’s, and we’ll have coffee and talk about stuff. And see my grandkids. And that’s about it. That’s about my life.”

How are you doing health-wise?

“I went to a clinic in January in Austria, in southern Austria, called the Vivamayr Clinic. It is a wellness clinic that focuses on digestive system. As well as many other things – they have many cancer patients there, and they provide so many different therapies. And it’s very calm and quiet – no phones, no music. It’s just about almost zenning out and diving into this – drinking a lot of water, tea, there’s no coffee, there’s obviously no alcohol. And I went because I had surgery in 2023 on my stomach, and it left me with gastroparesis, which is slow motility. So, food stays in my stomach for ten or twelve hours rather than two or three hours.”

“So, I really have to eat very carefully, and I have to be very selective about how I eat and not cross that line, because it’s hard for me to get back over. Y’know, one mistake costs me two or three days of discomfort. I was nauseous for a year. I was miserable for pretty much a year and a half…until I went to Vivamayr, and they just taught me how to take control of how I’m eating, what to eat, when to eat. And it’s just remarkable.”

“Because I’m not normally that type of person. I’m lazy and I just don’t work hard when it comes to things I don’t want to do. But this, for the first time in my life, just changed everything, and it’s been life changing for me. Since I went to see them, I’ve lost about 23 pounds, and I lost another I think 15 or 20 pounds before that. So I’m down close to 40 pounds in a year and a half.”

“And if I’m careful and I eat properly, I can live a happy, relatively normal life. If I don’t, then I suffer. So, you don’t want to feel crappy I’ve come to realize. You sort of take it day to day, but now I don’t want to feel crappy anymore, ever again. So, I’ve become very, very strict about it. I don’t drink anymore, I don’t smoke, I don’t eat junk. Absolutely no junk. Gluten free, lactose free. Like, all of that stuff – because that’s me. That’s what I have to do. It’s not a choice. This is what I have to do to maintain a decent, comfortable life.”

When the Victor album [1996’s self-titled] and Geddy’s solo album [2000’s My Favourite Headache] were reissued last year, I was hoping maybe you would play shows together and perform material off those albums for the first time ever. Was that ever a consideration?

“No, but it’s not a bad idea. We never even thought about something like that. Yeah, that would have been something to consider. I mean, I really wanted to remix the [Victor] record. I was very unhappy with the original mix that I did on it. It was very bright. Bottom end really wasn’t there. So, it gave me a second opportunity to do that. And when I stripped everything down, I realized that I’d gone so overboard when I recorded the record…I had six tracks of guitars playing the same thing. Like, ‘Okay, doubling is fine. But do you need to have six tracks just to have that dense ’90s kind of sound?'”

“And then when I stripped it all down here, I mixed it here in this room. I took all those guitars out. I just left one or two guitars so that was more direct, cleaner, more air around everything. I was much happier – the bottom end felt better. Much happier with the mixes. It’s hard to go back 20 years and revisit something, or 30 years revisit something, that was so important, but you’ve gone beyond it now. But it was a great exercise for me to have a second chance at it.”

Do you ever go back and listen to Rush’s music?

“Not really. Every once in a while I hear a track and…I’ve never been able to separate myself from the guy that worked on that music that wanted it to be better. So, everything that I hear I think could be better. I just focus on, ‘Oh, why did I play that little thing? Or this.’ It’s hard to just sit back and listen. And I think that’s probably pretty common for anybody that records music. But, yeah, maybe I’ll have a listen more often.”

I recently went back and re-read quite a few of Neil Peart’s lyrics, because I was putting together a list of some of his best lyrics for a site I write for. What would you say are some of your favorite lyrics he wrote?

“Oh, ‘Freewill’ was great. ‘Closer to the Heart’ was to the point. ‘Xanadu’ was that sort of really cool period from the more ‘fantasy’ era – because it’s just so descriptive and colorful, the lyrics in that song. ‘Subdivisions’ speaks to a whole generation. Yeah, he was a very, very gifted lyricist. He was a great observer, and that’s where he wrote from. I think for the last third of his writing career – he was more of an observer, looking at things around him and commenting on them more from his own personal viewpoint.”

I think “Losing It” is one of his best lyrics ever.

“Yeah. That and ‘The Garden.’ ‘The Garden,’ really, for its time when that song came out, or when that album came out [2012’s Clockwork Angels], we never would have expected that that would be the closing number for Rush’s life. And ‘Losing It,’ boy, it’s very, very poignant. We all face that.”

Especially as I’m getting older, that song kind of takes on a new meaning.

“Yeah, you notice that too, huh? [Laughs] Yeah, I wish I was the guitar player I was 20 years ago, but, I’m still working at it.”

Which modern day music artists do you enjoy?

“None. I don’t listen to any modern music, to be honest with you. I take that back – I heard a band last week, called Måneskin. They’re an Italian band. Amazing. They sounded really, really good. I’m not saying there’s no good music around, there is. I’m just not interested in searching for it anymore. Those days are over for me, where I’d go to the record store and buy an album and take it home and go through that whole process.”

“I do what I do. I’d much rather listen to music I create these days. And I do a lot of that, from my own personal use. I have reams of stuff that I record that I play in the background, if we’re having a dinner party or something like that. And it’s under the radar, nobody knows who it is or what it is. It’s just really nice music in the background. Modern music, pop music, all that stuff, I can’t stand it, really – to be honest with you. It’s just about dancing and jumping around. And I really don’t have a lot of respect for it.”

My daughter is a very big fan of Taylor Swift. And while that’s not the music I typically listen to, when I do hear her it, I have to give credit that she does a variety of styles. It’s not predictable – it’s not a same style she always does.

“I’m exactly the same as you. I’m not familiar with her music – I know a few songs. I know a Taylor Swift song as soon as it comes on, which is great. But she’s a player, and she’s a writer, and the way she took care of her crew, like, what was it, $90 million in bonuses or something for her crew? [The figure was reported to be $197 million] A long tour – it was a couple of years. But she thinks like we always thought.”

“And again, I’m not a fan of that kind of music – I think it’s well done and I give her credit for it. But I give her tons of credit for being the person that she is, and handling herself the way she does, and the enormous influence that she has. Very, very positive influence she has on her so loyal audience. It’s incredible. I have total respect for her.”

Future plans?

“Well, I’m gonna finish this cup of tea and have another one, and go on and do another 50 interviews today, and for the rest of the week! I’m still working on a documentary on the Great Lakes with a bunch of people – some guys from Barenaked Ladies, from the Rheostatics. We’ve been working on this for a while. It’s an interesting project, because we get together and we jam, and then we start pulling stuff out of those jams and then building from those. And a lot of the jams, as we progress, get better and better and better, and stand alone as parts.”

“I’m working with a young female artist on some of her stuff. I do stuff with Marco Minnemann from time to time – I have one project here on my desktop with him. So, I’m playing a lot. I play every day. I play before I go to bed for an hour, as an absolute. But usually, I’m getting at least three or four hours of guitar playing in every day. So, it’s all good.”