Another month, another Neal Morse album. I jest, of course, it’s been eight months since the last album he and Mike Portnoy both appeared on together. I say it simply to remind everyone how frequently these guys release new material. This time however sees the return of The Neal Morse Band (henceforth known as NMB) for the first time since early 2019, with ‘Innocence & Danger.’ The band once again finds themselves in the unenviable place of following up a massively successful and masterful album. The previous two of course were double concept albums, this time around we get another double album, but with unconnected songs. Given that the past four albums Neal has been a part of were all concept albums – mostly of epic length – it is no surprise that the band wanted to take a break from the format. And the results, while not up to the last two, are more than worthy addition to the band’s discography.
The disks are split by length, with the shorter (by prog standards) tracks on disk one, often with a lighter, pop-ish sensibility, and the second made up of two epics running over 19 minutes and a half-hour respectively. For my money, the meat of the album is the second disk, and the one I’ll probably play more often moving forward, although the first disk has some great moments as well. This is probably the most collaborative NMB album yet, with more influence by Bill Hubauer (keys), and Eric Gillette (guitars) than ever before, and probably the most fully rounded use of the full band as vocalists, well except for Randy George (bass) of course, but that is nothing new.
The album starts off with “Do It All Again,” a fairly typical Neal “album kickoff” song. Which is to say it starts with a lot of energy up front, prominent guitar, and keys, and waits a bit before the vocals kick in. This isn’t a knock against the song, but it’s pretty much exactly what I expected when I first hit play. The balance between the three main vocalists (Neal, Bill, and Eric) are spot on and used very effectively, I’ve argued before that this is the most talented band that Neal has been a part of, and they know how to use their vocal skills, both individually and together in a way few bands manage to do. Mike of course attacks his drum set with fervor when necessary while keeping subtle restraint when it is called for. Randy’s bass is rock steady, and mixed wonderfully, meaning you can clearly hear it through the whole album, and of course, Eric’s guitar solos just keep getting better.
They follow it up with “Bird On A Wire,” which is similar in nature to the previous song but has a heavier sound to it, and Eric’s riffs and aggressive soloing take center stage throughout – it’s going to be a ripper live for certain. Things get considerably lighter with “Your Place In The Sun,” which has a much poppier sound to it, not dissimilar to Neal’s Spock’s Beard days. It tells the tale of life on the road and a musician’s quest to find their place in the scene. It’s fun enough, but not terribly memorable either.
As the first disk is fairly short, it would be too easy to go song by song, so I’ll just skip ahead to “The Way It Had To Be.” It is one of the more unique songs that the band has done over the years, an unusually heavy Pink Floyd vibe is heard through the whole thing, it’s very atmospheric, slow, and dreamy to begin with. Eric takes on lead vocals for the first half, and the lyrics include the line ‘innocence and danger’ from which the album takes its name. There is a brief burst of energy about halfway through, but on a whole, it keeps its slower Floydesque tone and feeling, Randy’s bass shines throughout, and Eric does his best “David Gillmore guitar solo” as well.
Two more songs are in need of mentioning, the first is “Not Afraid Pt.1,” as the second part of the song kicks off disk two. It is mostly acoustically driven, quite reminiscent of Neal’s singer-songwriter album ‘Life and Times,’ with a slow build-up in the middle. The chorus of ‘cause I’m not afraid anymore / and I think I finally opened up the door/ and I’m ready to reach out for something more’ is highly catchy, point of fact my six-year-old daughter has been walking around the house singing it all week… Disk one ends with something I didn’t expect, which is a prog version of Simon and Garfunkel’s classic “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” Its inclusion brings to mind Yes covering “America” back in the day. It is certainly different, and they take the song places that Paul Simon surely could never have foreseen when he wrote it. Vocally they take it all seriously, they’re clearly not phoning it in just because it’s a cover, but I can’t help but think that it would have been better to save it for a surprise during live shows than include it on the album itself. On a whole, the first disk is solid, but not much of it is as memorable as the band’s best work before it.
The second disk however certainly matches up with anything from the first NMB album, and a number of Neal’s earlier epics, and as it only contains two songs, I’ll cover them both. First is “Not Afraid Pt. 2” the second half to the above-mentioned song, though in truth I don’t think they have all that much in common other than the recurring theme of breaking away from worldly fear. If the two were played back to back as one song the transition between the parts would be a bit jarring. Covering a song that runs over the 19-minute mark gets a bit tricky, as you can’t go section by section, or you’ll bog everything down. Neal and Mike, however, have been part of many many long songs together over the years. This year alone Transatlantic released three versions of the same single song album while reworking and changing each version, the shortest of which still runs over an hour.
“Not Afraid Pt. 2” does however bring in some real heaviness that is sparse on the first disk, and that is always refreshing, the driving groove between Mike’s drums and Eric’s blistering guitar attack never grows old. The song also harkens back a bit to Neal’s early days. There’s a strong ‘V’ era Spock’s vibe (especially around the 9-minute mark), and sound to the song, especially in the vocal harmonies and melodic approach. Lyrically it’s a bit more train of thought than most of Neal’s more recent work, but his frequent themes of the lost finding their way home, and the honest journey involved remains. This song is a shining example of his ability to get a message across without being preachy. The song has a very natural ebb and flows to it, and everyone is given a chance to let their vocals carry the song. This is a very unselfish band, no ego gets in the way of what would be best for the song and lines, and verses are shared and arranged to heighten the strength of each vocalist. Musically the solos are shared as well, and everyone in the band gets their moment to tear it up. And the ending is as soaring as anything the band has written.
The album closes with the 31 minutes “Beyond The Years.” After starting with quiet strings, Bill comes in to lead things off before quiet piano, and Neal and Eric bringing in the full band, and the energy builds. The following half-hour is a rollercoaster of highs and lows, at times quiet and meditative, and veering back into prog metal territory. As is typical in a song of this length (for any band) the melodic themes keep everything tied together, the result is a song with many moving parts and styles (including a brief detour into Spanish music) that build on each other and create a unified and coherent whole. Long songs can at times feel pieced together, random bits are thrown at each other, and the band hopes something sticks. And given that for this album, all the musicians brought in their own ideas, melodies, and pre-recordings, it easily could have gone in that messy direction. Mike however has long been a master at arranging (a role he’s talked about in many bands) and helping build a long song in such a way that everything feels natural, and that has most certainly been the case with this piece. As for what the music itself sounds like, let’s just say that Neal has been at this for over 25 years at this point, and any fan should know what to expect. He didn’t rewrite the book for this one, but with a fully contributing band, it makes the familiar fresh, and never boring. And special mention must go out to the dizzying bass solo that Randy gives in the latter half of the song, and reminds one that really, the world just needs more bass solos.
This is a long album, between the two disks it has a runtime close to 100 minutes. The proghead in me generally holds to the “more is never enough” mantra that the genre has long put forth. It, therefore, is a bit painful for me to admit it, but in this case, I think that this could have been trimmed down from being a very good double album to being an excellent single-disk album. The second disk would of course remain fully intact, but losing the cover song, and a few of the weaker songs (“Another Story To Tell,” “The Way It Had To Be,” and “Emergence”) from the first disk would have tightened everything up and made it stronger.
NMB have once again released a lengthy, deep, and often moving piece of modern prog rock. At its best, it becomes clearer than ever that the longer this group of musicians work together the stronger and more varied they will become. ‘Innocence & Danger’ is a bit uneven at times, but with two massive epics to its name that rival anything that came before them, it is a more than worthy addition to the band’s discography.
1 comment
The way music today is released and listened I like that the band doesn’t hold anything back and gives you a full array of songs, so you can pick and choose or just listen to the whole as you please.