How the Neal Morse Band Wrote Another Concept Album While Nobody Was Looking
Neal Morse Band L.I.F.T. Thirty-eight albums in, another ambitious concept record. Stands toe to toe with Similitude. Reviewed.
Neal Morse has released thirty-eight progressive-rock-adjacent albums in thirty-one years. Thirty-eight. At some point the output stops being prolific and becomes meteorological. L.I.F.T. is the latest from the Neal Morse Band configuration, with Mike Portnoy on drums, Randy George on bass, Eric Gillette on guitar and vocals, and Bill Hubauer on keys and vocals. The album was written and recorded in secret at Gillette’s home studio while Portnoy was simultaneously managing his return to Dream Theater. That scheduling miracle honestly deserves its own album.
L.I.F.T. is a concept album following a protagonist from connection through turmoil to spiritual fulfilment. It opens with “Beginning,” an overture introducing the themes that recur throughout, and closes with “Love All Along,” an eleven-minute epic that builds from a restrained vocal into a harmonising choir and the kind of extended, euphoric prog crescendo only this band can deliver without collapsing under its own sincerity.
The strengths are the strengths that have defined the band since The Grand Experiment. Collective musicianship, compositional depth, melodic accessibility, a chemistry that deepens each release. Portnoy’s drumming is ferocious when required and tasteful when restraint is needed. Gillette’s whammy-bar work on the harder passages adds a proto-prog-metal edge that keeps the album from settling too comfortably into symphonic territory.
The limitation is the one that has defined Morse’s post-2002 output, which is the spiritual content. The gospel choirs and worship-adjacent passages are musically interesting as prog gestures but tonally predictable for anyone who knows the catalogue. The closing epic’s extended devotional section, while sincere, tests the patience of listeners who do not share the theological framework. L.I.F.T. stands toe to toe with Similitude of a Dream in ambition. Whether it matches it in execution basically depends on your appetite for the gospel of Neal.
