Neal Morse - "One"

Of all things it took the National Review to reinvigorate my interest in new music. It must've been at least a year ago when one of the columnists on NRO mentioned that there is indeed new progressive rock being created that would appeal to dinosaurs such as myself, and the columnist mentioned Spock's Beard's "Snow" as a particularly worthy example to check out. I picked up the aforementioned, along with various efforts by The Flower Kings, Dream Theater and Transatlantic to see if this was indeed akin to the great classics of prog, and I was gratified to hear some great chops and melodies on "Snow" and the Transatlantic albums (indeed, hearing Transatlantic do some wonderful Beatles covers in concert was a treat). I'm still a bit waffling on The Flower Kings and Dream Theater; the chops are there, the music sounds right, but there aren't any hooks that grab me.

Neal Morse decided to leave both Spock's Beard and Transatlantic in light of his religious awakening, and has put out a couple of albums with religious themes since then (Morse also participated in the "Yellow Matter Custard" Beatles cover project which I reviewed earlier this year; like Phil Keaggy, he's still a huge Beatles fan even though it may raise some eyebrows with his more religious fans). "Testimony" was an intensely personal album, with a great sense of dynamics and melody. It was very off-putting to a segment of Morse's fans because of the religious themes, and generated a lot of controversy. The live performance DVD of Testimony is a very powerful show, with a terrific live band that includes everything from electric cello to pedal steel, but again, it's the story of Morse's personal journey, and may not be to everyone's taste.

"One" is a bit less personal than "Testimony", looking through the lyrics I can discern references to more than a few frequently-cited parts of the Bible, everything from Genesis to the parable of the prodigal son. The lyrical story line follows the theme of alienation and then returning to God as did "Testimony", but it's in much more of a straight-ahead prog rock format. The lyrics are indeed positive and hopeful, although since I'm not a Christian I would prefer to leave comment on the theological content to those who can speak to it from an informed perspective. The casual listener will have to understand that there are a few references specific to Christian theology here, not just generic belief in God, but in the context of this being a positive, innovative record I'm comfortable enough with my own religious position to let Mr. Morse have his say his way.

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