Album Review: Neal Morse - Sola Gratia

This new album from Neal Morse is interesting on two levels. First is that this unlike the last three prog records he has made, this one is credited to Neal as a solo artist, and not The Neal Morse Band. This is mainly related to the quarantine reality of 2020, but it's a fact I happen to be a fan of. I put on a Neal Morse record to hear Neal, and while there's nothing wrong with Bill and Eric, I would rather have Neal providing all of the vocals. Second is that this record is titled as a spiritual successor to "Sola Scriptura", which is the most controversial album Neal has ever made.

Dipping back into telling the story of religion, Neal is at least giving us reason to recall "Sola Scriptura", which I don't think is a very good idea. While Neal has said it was never his intention, that record comes across as being highly anti-Catholic. The language was part of the protestant movement, but hearing Neal singing that the Catholic church is "the whore" was so out-of-character, petty, and unnecessary. Intentional or not, it didn't sit well with me. People as evangelical as Neal should be much more careful about making their denomination sound like the only 'true' one. Christianity is about acceptance and love, at least if you actually believe the words of Jesus and not the people who came after.

This record kicks off with lyrics about how Paul preached the truth long before Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door. Once again, that writes off more than a millennium of the Catholic church as being false, which is not an attractive position to take in the first sentences of a record.

The ties between the albums are hard to ignore when a few of the melodies from "Sola Scriptura" pop up as reprises here. That is fully intentional, which means you cannot completely separate this work from that one, both for good and bad.

As the record unfolds, the story to pay attention to is that this album follows the recent trend of Neal's works, with the majority of the songs being looser and with less immediate hooks than what I consider to be his peak years. There aren't any movements across this record as sticky and memorable as "Keep Silent" or "Already Home". When I think of Neal as a prog artist, his knack for blending pop melodies with prog is what stands at the top of the list, so the lack here is concerning.

The other thing I don't quite get is the insistence on being fully prog. If this is a concept album, and it's telling a story, the lengthy instrumental breaks, as well as the segue tracks, add nothing to the narrative. It's my take that an album trying to tell a story should be more tightly written, and should put the focus on the narrative, and not wander around in musical ideas that don't move those things along. 

I don't want to give the impression that this is a bad album, because it's not. What it is, however, is a disappointing album. I was expecting Neal to have dipped into his well of inspiration and come up with an album that rivals his earlier run of greatness. That didn't happen here. This record is named after "Sola Scriptura", but only carries on it's most questionable qualities. This record is structured like "?", but doesn't have a "Solid As The Sun" type song on it.

"Sola Gratia" is a middle-of-the-road Neal Morse album. It's perfectly solid, but there's a spark I find missing from it. Maybe this is the wrong way to judge an album, but if this was an evangelical statement, it certainly would not make me think about converting to Neal's faith. I have too many questions left lingering.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this whole thing.