Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The latest album from Neal Morse, one of the four maestros behind Progressive Rock’s Transatlantic, is perhaps one of the most personal of his entire career.
Songs From November has all the feel of a man making peace with the world, acknowledging the past and arguably all the faults, the successes and victorious accomplishments that a life can have but which can be viewed from a distance as being less than perfect as the true victory is in the surviving and what you do and how it inspires others. Neal Morse reaches through the songs on the album a type of reflective armistice, a lasting harmony between the thoughts of the past and the hope of the future.
Songs From November is an inspired choice of title with reflection in mind. The calendar is counting down towards the end of a year, in terms of the human psyche it is the most reflective of all, the counting down of days before the winter darkness comes along and you miss the flourish of grounded maturity that comes from being in your 20’s and early 30. This perhaps shows in the way that the album is presented and fully distanced from the genre many would happily hear him play all night long in. Songs From November has more in common, and beautifully so, with the likes of Joe Walsh, there is of course no exuberance of guitar, for there is no need, what the listener finds as they delve between each song is a man who is now seemingly comfortable with his lot, who knows how hard he is working but who is fully aware of the possible mistakes he has made and it is a glorious sound that he and the fellow musicians on the album have created.
From songs such as Whatever Days, the fondness that exudes throughout Tell Me Annabelle, the very human introspection and almost confessional, supremely honest outlook of My Time Of Dying and When Things Slow Down and the pride in Daddy’s Daughter, Neal Morse might not have created another Progressive wonderment. However, what he has done is bought together all the emotions that pace up and down inside the human spirit, all the angst and magnificence that makes up a life and let it loose from out of the bottle, the genie is free and makes no judgement, for how can he, Mr. Morse has passed judgement upon himself and shown his heart to the world.
A triumph that perhaps many might not have seen coming but it has every business in being played over and over again.
Ian D. Hall