ONE

For his second prog solo album (Neal had also put out other solo albums in other genres prior to this), Neal Morse changed tack a little. Testimony was a sprawling double concept album, a sort of mirror image of Neal's final album with Spock's Beard which took as its core theme his life story and his decision to shift out of band life so he could spend more time focusing on his faith (both in his everyday life and in his music). It was all composed by Morse by himself, and the other musicians there were essentially just along to help out.

This time, around, Neal starts getting a nucleus of collaborators around him - the key pair being Mike Portnoy and Randy George, both of whom also get songwriting credits alongside Neal. (It's no surprise that this rhythm section would eventually go on to be the backbone of the Neal Morse Band.) Mike, of course, needs no introduction to prog audiences for his role in Dream Theater, and was a bandmate of Neal's in Transatlantic; Randy, for his part, came up in the Christian prog group Ajalon, and having a collaborator along who'd been tackling the challenge of creating intellectually challenging prog music in a Christian context was doubtless invaluable.

There's a wide range of guest musicians here, as there were on Testimony, but it's Neal and that rhythm section who are right at the core of the music, and I think it's helpful for Neal to have some collaborators as closely involved with the composition and overall structure of the album as Mike and Randy are here; the album definitely feels like it benefits from having a deeper bench of creative ideas to draw on in comparison to Testimony, which was solid but was kind of Neal Morse business as usual. In particular, the combination of Mike's drumming technique and a dynamic bassist in the form of Randy George is a little reminiscent of some of what Transatlantic were doing on their first two albums, which will be pleasing to listeners who enjoyed those releases.

It's concept album o'clock once again, but this time Neal and crew limit themselves to a single disc. The chosen subject matter is the parable of the Prodigal Son, and obviously as a story of a straying person who comes back to the right path there's a touch of thematic overlap with Testimony, but the approach is different enough to ensure this doesn't turn into Testimony Disc 3.

It's also a good choice of subject matter because whilst it's clearly meaningful to Neal in the course of his own personal spiritual journey, it's also a tale which is widely beloved enough that you don't necessarily need to subscribe to Neal's specific views in order to appreciate the narrative here. "Christian rock" of the sort which is made by and sold to Christians semi-exclusively has a reputation of sometimes being a bit narrowly doctrinaire and unimaginative in its subject matter - and not for no reason - but Neal adeptly manages to avoid falling into this trap whilst still presenting his personal perspective in an unabashed and unashamed manner: he's offering this artistic vision to all listeners, but he's making no bones about where he personally stands, and even though I'm not aligned with him when it comes to my spiritual views I have to respect that.