Style: Soft Rock, Folk Rock, Prog Rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Crosby Stills & Nash, The Doobie Brothers, America, ’70s American rock in general, Subsignal, City and Colour
Review by: Christopher
Country: United States / United Kingdom
Release date: 10 November, 2023
If you couldn’t tell already from the naming convention, Nick D’Virgilio (Big Big Train, ex-Spock’s Beard), Neal Morse (Transatlantic, NMB, Flying Colors) & Ross Jennings (Haken, Novena) are pulling a Crosby, Stills & Nash on Sophomore, their—sigh—sophomore album together. D’Virgilio, Morse & Jennings (henceforth to be referred to as DM&J because my years on this earth are finite) play accessible, folk-tinged, soft rock of the variety you’d hear on a midwest radio station circa 1972, emphasising multi-layered vocal harmonies and acoustic guitars, with catchy verse-chorus structures, and the occasional guitar solo.
I’m a sucker for a nice vocal harmony and our eponymous trio work well together with the caveat that Jennings is sometimes a little mismatched. While I like his voice, his timbre is so unique that it doesn’t always blend well with the more “mainstream” singing of Morse and D’Virgilio—he’s a modern Michael McDonald in that regard. He proves best either when leading or when watered down by multi-layered harmonies, meaning that certain songs like “Hard to Be Easy”, “Mama”, and “Walking on Water” work more to his, and the band’s, advantage.
There’s some nice musicianship as you’d expect from such a talented trio: the acoustic riff and solo on “Hard to Be Easy” is very reminiscent of America; “Right Where You Should Be” is terribly cliched—half David Crosby, half Willie Nelson—but a fitting country homage; “Weighs Me Down” has a wonderful contemplative quality; and “Walking on Water” is an easy standout with its percussion conferring an America quality again—or even early Dire Straits—while the acoustic and electric guitars blend well, with countryish low-end bends and a solid guitar solo.
However, there are issues, the more glaring of which are the chiming bell irreverence of the main motif on “Tiny Little Fires” which proves ingratiatingly jovial, and the break on “I’m Not Afraid”, where one of them starts saying stuff like “Feels good, don’t it?” over an instrumental as though it’s a live performance, which made me cringe so hard I ruptured my pyloric sphincter. You are not Donald Fagen, you do not have the necessary effortless cool to pull that off, nor the requisite smooth sax solo playing underneath to justify having said anything at all. Do not do it again.
A greater irony is that ‘70s soft rock was far more progressive than this homage by prog musicians. Listen to “Laughing” by David Crosby, “Clear as the Driven Snow” by The Doobie Brothers, or “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot; those guys knew how to make stand-out tracks that were adventurous in scope and structure. Meanwhile, virtually every track on Sophomore is either a mid-tempo croon-fest or a bittersweet vaguely folkish alterna-rock anthem; unadventurous songs that all feel like accessible singles with no real swings. The composition within that limited sphere is very good, but without any real sense of variation, very few songs stand out. DM&J are immensely talented performers but there’s nothing new here; no boundaries pushed, no artistic statement made. None of the heartwrenching beauty of “Helplessly Hoping”, none of the affectionate ease of “Listen to the Music”, nor the sense of liberation of “Ventura Highway”; Sophomore is a collection of competently made yet emotionally inert imitations.
Sophomore also lacks that requisite raw authenticity. With the classics, I feel like I’m in a bar in the rural midwest where the air is dusty, the beer is warm (which isn’t to its credit but it’s part of the authentic ‘Murican experience), and the music is unfolding before your eyes. With DM&J, I feel like I’m in a high-end recording studio with temperature control, watching three middle-aged men discuss the intricacies of recording software, and some psychopath just handed me a bottle of sparkling water. When The Doobie Brothers sang “Long Train Runnin’” it evoked a juggernaut Amtrak freighter gliding through the infinite scrubland of the midwest; when DM&J sing “Anywhere the Wind Blows” you can’t help but imagine a frigid easterly blowing them up the Chiswick flyover and into a traffic jam on the M4.
D’Virgilio, Morse & Jennings make music you can play to your dad or even your grandad, but they’re gonna moan about it, and they’d be justified in doing so. As much as it sounds like the boys are having a great time playing together, Sophomore has neither the thoughtfulness to be interesting nor the authenticity to be charming, and so comes off feeling somewhat frivolous. If you were a couple of pints deep and the three of them struck up a makeshift gig in one corner of the pub, the spontaneity and immediacy of the performance would likely make for a great night, but the stack of CDs for sale behind the bar would remain untouched. Some things are best heard either live or not at all.
Recommended tracks: Walking On Water, Weighs Me Down, Hard to Be Easy
You may also like: Advent Horizon, Southern Empire
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify
Label: InsideOut Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
D’Virgilio, Morse & Jennings is:
– Nick D’Virgilio (vocals, drums, percussion)
– Ross Jennings (vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards)
– Neal Morse (vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards)
0 Comments