Take Two: Neal Morse Band - L.I.F.T.

It doesn't happen very often, but every now and again a review I write will ring hollow as I spent more time with an album. Every piece we write is merely a snapshot in time, expressing how we are thinking and feeling in that moment. As we know, life does not stay static, and our relationships with music change as much as anything else. Some records will grow into unexpected favorites, while others will lose their luster as the banality sets in with repeated listens. We do our best to extrapolate how we think the curve is going to develop, but the truth of the matter is that we're not going to be right every time. This is one of those times.

Recently, my review for this new Neal Morse Band album was trying to balance the relief and comfort of hearing something that reminded me of the Neal Morse music I've loved with the distraction and angst of some choices Neal makes when putting these albums together. Nothing I said wasn't true, but I didn't have enough time to let the scale come to a stop before judging which side weighed down the other. I'm not taking that review down, but I'm adding this one for better context.

A recent project I was undertaking for myself brought me into my past, and reminded me of strands of psychology I was talking about with a layer of dust on my memories. While I understood the theory of the message in "Shame About My Shame", I had lost some of the visceral emotion from when that lesson was learned. Getting that back, the album began to unfold for me as something more important than another preaching prog record. This one hit on thoughts and doubts that have haunted the back of my mind for decades, just as I was trying to emerge from an existential crisis about the very kinds of "hurt people" hurting me the band sings about.

The five years that have passed since this collection of musicians has released anything was spent mostly ignoring Neal's output. The break means that now I'm hearing the familiar choices and sounds with fresh ears, and I'm finally ready to dive in and embrace their particular brand of excess. There had been the occasional song like "Breath Of Angels" that cut through, but Neal had put out so much so quickly that keeping up with his releases wasn't that different from doom-scrolling.

The key to this is the psychology, as I found a piece of myself in "Shame About My Shame". Hearing the lyric echoing in the memories I was writing about was the entry point, while Neal's epic and emotional guitar solo was the hook that pulled me back in. So much music comes and goes, dismissed before it ever gets a chance, that I can sometimes forget how much a great moment can affect us. That's what the two dramatic ballads here, the other being "The Great Withdrawal", do. I haven't had that kind of reaction to Neal's music in years, largely because his writing usually is coated in such a thick layer of preaching schmalz that I can't take him seriously.

This record focuses on pain, regret, and the ways people treat us leave lasting scars we have to learn how to live with. That's the through-line of my memories, so we are dealing with a moment of serendipity where the person I would perhaps least expect to offer words I relate to has put out a record that absolutely speaks to the hope I'm still struggling to find. I still take issue with the theological ramifications of Neal's declaration on "Love All Along" that suffering is for a purpose, though now I can hear the joy at the end not so much as a thumb in the eye of those who haven't gotten to that point, but rather as a lacking I can feel shame about that is more healthy than hating myself for being myself.

It helps that this album features the most consistent songcraft the band has put to tape yet. While they've done plenty of good things in the past, it was always fragmented in packages that held way too much music for the cream to rise to the top. Presented with albums too long to have the patience for, Neal was inadvertently sending me on a journey to other musical avenues, which I might not have been ready for this album without. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, and I feel that is what happened here. 

While my initial review was positive with plenty of caveats, I can throw most of those aside now. Nit-picking can still be done, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in cases like this.

As I learned from telling my stories again, there is a lot of the past that carries through the present. Sometimes, we forget how to look past the scars to see that whatever good we have in this life, as it wouldn't be there without having been through what we have. I don't consider that a gift the way Neal does, but accepting that fact, and choosing to focus on those few good things, is the message I needed to hear.

I suppose all of that that makes "L.I.F.T." the front-runner for Album Of The Year, which is not a bet I would have taken.