God knows Neal Morse loves a project. Driven and prolific, late last year he released No Hill For A Climber, an album with some younger, lesser-known talents under named The Resonance. Now comes Deep Water, the debut album by Cosmic Cathedral, a supergroup of sorts, again instigated and masterminded by Morse.
He’s on vocals, guitar and keyboards, with Chester Thompson (Genesis, Weather Report) on drums; veteran guitar magus Phil Keaggy, who also shares lead vocals; and Byron House (Robert Plant, Al Green) on bass. They may have an average age of 70, and Keaggy’s hand tendon surgery may have slowed the album’s gestation – but all four remain extremely capable players.
Another thread that binds, though, is the quartet’s shared Christian faith. Deep Water takes its name from a phrase used in a sermon by Yorkshire-born Victorian evangelist Smith Wigglesworth when describing a spiritual walk with God.
Musically speaking, Cosmic Cathedral are a broad church. From 14-minute, Genesis-meets-Pat-Metheny-like opener The Heart Of Life through yacht-rock piano ballad I Won’t Make It to the spacey, vocoder-led Deep Water Suite Intro, they tap jazz-fusion, sleek Steely Dan-like grooves and soul flavours along the way.
Morse’s assertion that the music can be fully enjoyed by believers and non-believers alike seems reasonable
Although some of the more virtuosic passages just occasionally seem more like fretting-hand exercise than actual music, Morse and Keaggy’s vocals blend a treat, especially on The Heart Of Life and the drivetime-radio-friendly Fires Of The Sunrise.
Morse’s assertion that the music can be fully enjoyed by believers and non-believers alike seems reasonable – but lyrically there’s no ambiguity here. Deep Water’s evangelical thrust could hardly be clearer: ‘Jesus came, I saw his light, He chased away the doubts of yesterday.’
It would be unfair to describe a message that’s clearly paramount to Morse as cliché, but might there be a slightly more inventive way of conveying it, lyrically speaking?
Keaggy and House appeared on his 2003 LP Testimony, the concept record wherein he detailed the conversion to Christianity which also prompted his exit from Spock’s Beard. Deep Water comes on like a reassertion of his faith’s key tenets with like-minded friends. It’s also a more than a decent listen, though some will feel alienated by its preaching and scattershot approach to genre.
Deep Water is on sale now via InsideOut.
