I admit, at first I had a few difficulties with this album; many sounded to me a little too gently and harmoniously. Just because I appreciate the songwriter Neal Morse also beyond its activities with Spock's Beard, he offered here at first glance little that is new. As much as you can hear in the actual music of a past when certain Prerecord expectations are not met! For now, this CD turns almost continuously in my player, and I can not get enough of this music. It's a strange-suggestive mix of emotional depth and cheerful unproblematic numbers but never be inconsequential by the typical "Morse Touch". The harmonic-smoothed, streamlined newer songs (compared to the intense older ballads) are in my eyes (and ears) is not an end in itself, but rather the result of a personal development, or otherwise, direct said: they are like ointment soaked bandages on a wound. Who looks behind the facade and in a - so far recognizably - trying to get biographical context (even with Spock's Beard pieces), will get an idea of how much Neal Morse must have fought in the past 20 years for recognition: It's him fallen certainly nothing, nothing "given" been. (If one day a biography published, we will know more if possible.) Conclusion: This is adult, most personal pop music that, if it were in the world with the right things to, really ought to be at the top of the charts.
