One thing\u2019s for sure: if you model the name of your harmony-heavy three-singer-songwriter supergroup after the granddaddy of them all\u2014Crosby, Stills & Nash\u2014you\u2019d best be able to back that up.<\/p>\n
But it only makes sense here, since progressive rock luminaries Nick D\u2019Virgilio (Big Big Train, ex-Spock\u2019s Beard, solo), Neal Morse (Transatlantic, ex-Spock\u2019s Beard, solo) and Ross Jennings (Haken, Novena, solo) have both the talent and the cojones to go there, and have explicitly modeled this excursion outside their typical musical boxes on CSN.<\/p>\n
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that these three gentlemen treasure harmonies; the layering and chorusing of intertwined voices has long been one of the strengths of Spock\u2019s Beard in particular, where Morse and D\u2019Virgilio previously meshed their voices to great effect. For his part, Jennings grew up a CSN fan while developing into one of the leading voices of 2010s progressive metal. <\/p>\n
The group, whose first album Troika<\/i> was recorded remotely during lockdown and appeared in 2021, initially came together when Morse reached out to D\u2019Virgilio, seeking an outlet for some of his mellower, primarily acoustic songs and looking for a compatible harmony vocalist to sing with. As the tracks began to develop, they brought in Jennings as an additional vocalist and (re-)discovered the magic of three singer-songwriters trading songs while supporting one another\u2019s lead vocals. <\/p>\n
Sophomore<\/i>\u2014whose name plays out cleverly on the album packaging, with vintage yearbook headshots of each player emphasizing what a lark this whole enterprise is\u2014delivers serious songs that are nonetheless all about the pure joy of making music. \u00a0The attractions here are chiefly two\u2014that joy, and experiencing the unexpected. Listen to enough of a player\u2019s work and you start to think of them in a certain way, as a certain kind of musician playing within a certain stylistic range. It\u2019s a pleasure hearing these three bust out of that genre box and understanding that their musical interests and affections range far wider than a single style of music. <\/p>\n
Morse-penned lead-off track \u201cHard To Be Easy\u201d delivers anthemic harmony, a celebration of three intertwined voices on a mostly acoustic number whose subtle instrumental flourishes remind you that all three of these guys have instrumental chops for days. It\u2019s a solid, hooky track about searching for that natural groove in a relationship, that also functions\u2014like most of these tracks\u2014as a celebration of their collaboration.<\/p>\n
D\u2019Virgilio\u2019s \u201cLinger At The Edge Of My Memory\u201d wallows in a series of nostalgic images and moments \u201cBitter and beautiful \/ Broken and wonderful,\u201d an easygoing, heartfelt look back at and appreciation of personal history. The lilting, harmony-rich \u201cTiny Little Fires\u201d features composer\/lead vocalist Jennings on xylophone, almost as if to prove how versatile these three multi-instrumentalists really are. And that\u2019s the thing about putting a musician in a genre box; if they\u2019re really good at one particular style of music, they might just be really good at another one, too, as shown on this tight and entertaining number.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight Where You Should Be\u201d finds Morse and company exploring a dusty country-rock sound, almost early Eagles in its flavorings, on a song about feeling beaten down and catching a second wind, with Gideon Klein guesting on pedal steel. Morse\u2019s \u201cThe Weary One\u201d feels like it could have been the prototype for this group, a melancholy ballad of self-reflection decorated with three-part harmonies and Klein\u2019s alternately sorrowful and uplifting string section.<\/p>\n
Having settled into a quiet moment at the halfway point of the album, the guys promptly pull a 180 and bust out with D\u2019Virgilio\u2019s hard-rocking \u201cMama.\u201d Despite a few lines that feel lifted from a Hallmark card, it\u2019s an utterly sincere tribute to a matriarch that doubles as a tribute to Queen with its full, limber harmonies and twisty, wah-wah\u2019d guitar solo. \u201cI\u2019m Not Afraid\u201d follows, a playful, upbeat acoustic ramble featuring writer D\u2019Virgilio on ukelele (!) as they build toward a choir-like bridge\/solo section.<\/p>\n
Jennings\u2019 \u201cWeigh Me Down\u201d might be the most CSN-ish number here, a stab at California rock that comes complete with airy, picked guitar, echoey drums and those classic close harmonies. His \u201cWalking On Water\u201d is a similarly airy Seals & Crofts-style driving folk-rock number that also offers yet more evidence of how versatile Nick D\u2019Virgilio is; his drumming sounds as natural and on the mark here as on a 19-minute prog epic. In the fourth and fifth minutes they bring up the electric guitar and organ and the song develops real drive, gradually accelerating from canter to full gallop. <\/p>\n
Morse closes things out with \u201cAnywhere The Wind Blows,\u201d a sunny, breezy, mid-tempo folk rock number with nice acoustic guitars and little flaring slide guitar accents. Two bonus tracks follow, strictly acoustic versions of \u201cRight Where You Should Be\u201d and The Weary One\u201d; both have that easy-breezy feel that\u2019s pleasant enough, though in both cases I think they chose the better versions to feature.<\/p>\n
Like Troika<\/i> before it, Sophomore<\/i> benefits most of all from not pretending to be anything that it isn\u2019t. D\u2019Virgilio, Morse & Jennings is a side project, not these guys\u2019 main band, and that shows up in the quality of the songwriting, which is consistently solid and rarely more than that. This group is about the love each man has for the simple act of making music; that\u2019s why you make an album like this, because it feels like it would be fun and rewarding, not in a material sense, but in getting to collaborate and trade ideas with interesting, talented peers. And if in the process you can help each other to step outside of your normal musical environment and stretch those creative muscles, so much the better. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10983],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46932","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dvirgilio-morse-jennings","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46932"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46932"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}