SNOW

Neal Morse's web site has this qoute about "Snow": "Snow is an exemplary concept album in the tradition of The Who's Tommy or Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and has earned the right to be mentioned in the same breath as these classics in the annals of Rock' n 'Roll."

That's hubris.

While a concept album is a fine idea, and a great way for Morse to leave the band, his ham handed approach to this album causes it to fail on a number of levels.

First, the story told here just doesn't seem original. If you've seen the movie "Powder", you have seen the main character, here renamed "Snow". There are also hefty helpings of plot from the two classic albums listed above.

Second, the music is the weakest of any of the Morse-led Spock's Beard albums. The overtures, one at the beginning of each CD, hint at some spectacular prog to come. False advertising. While there are a few good hard rock songs, there is next to nothing progressive about the mostly arena rock tracks that fill this turkey. And Morse should have listened to "Tommy", especially Captain Walker to hear music written to move a story along that doesn't sound forced.

Third, where Morse previously wrote some nice lyrics, even some with religious overtones, here, he sounds like he's trying to fill a playing card from Born Again Buzz Word Bingo. While he's not preachy, the lyrics are so unoriginal that they are cringeworthy. I keep wanting to hear "You are the wind at my back" as "You are the wind from my crack".

Aside from the overtures and the few hard rock pieces, the only musical highlight, and prog moment comes near the end of this ordeal of an album. After the reprise of Devil's Got My Throat, the music gets good for almost five minutes, with Snow's Night Out and the out-of-place Ladies And Gentleman, Mr. Ryo Okumoto on the Keyboards. But don't worry, the music gets quite lame again afterwards.

Spoiler alert: Snow apparently is a Jesus figure. If you hadn't figured it out from the parallels to "Powder" or Snow's girlfriend Carie (who's last name is probably Cagdalene), it's stuck in your face after Snow rises from the dead at the end and talk to God. Jeeze.

I have the deluxe edition with the bonus disk. The Yes cover is interesting, as are the "acoustic" versions of some earlier songs. But one the whole it doesn't add much value to the set.