There is a good reason you can find Steve Morse’s name on so many projects, ranging from his own Dixie Dregs, to his brief foray with Kansas, his vital role in kick-starting the nineties’ edition of Deep Purple, and the band that bares his name. He gets around because he is a great guitarist, one whose playing can fret chase with the best of them and whose writing chops are sharp enough to ground his aural acrobatics in well-structured songs with strong melodies anchoring his solo flights. There are a thousand great axe players, but few can rein in their playing long enough to build a tune, and Morse is one of them.

While Morse’s guitar playing and composing have always been a bit wild and experimental, the Dregs were one of the better southern rock fusion bands. But the production on his band’s latest, Split Decision, is anything but courageous or eclectic. In fact, it is incredibly stale, as if it were freeze-dried in 1988. Every instrument is coated with a shiny sheen that dissolved from the airwaves with the arrival of Nirvana, and that slick surface renders these tunes very bland and sounding all too much the same. Add in the worst trend in modern production, the maximizing of every instrument to blare at the exact same volume, and you lose all dynamics to Morse’s arrangements. Songs that should start slow and quiet and build to a fury already roar at full gear from the beginning, and only the tempo varies. These two misjudgments are more Achilles heels than they might seem at first. Morse’s magic relies on the interplay of his band, the melodic movements and development within each song, and his adventurous mixing of genres and influences. Thanks to a similar sound and a lack of varying textures, an album full of inventive quirky tunes running the gamut from folk to jazz to blues to Celtic to Zep sounds incredibly tedious and tiring from repetition and familiarity. Every song sounds much more like all the others than it should, and this constant sameness nearly destroys an instrumental album that relies on the music alone to hold your attention.

That is a shame. Underneath the gloss and glare, there are some great songs hidden with some stellar playing. Dave LaRue has a unique plunking bass style that grows more addictive on each listen, Morse lets loose some killer licks, and Van Romaine keeps up just fine on the drums. That last task is a thankless job, however, when the knob twisting has rendered every thick drum skin thin and shiny. When the rolls should thunder, they only flash with bright lightning gored of any rich rumbling bass. Every sharp skin is exactly as loud as the kick drum, and so the drum keeps percussive time without adding any tasty flavor to the tunes.

Seriously, some of these songs should smoke, but the instruments are so plastic-coated, sonics rub together frantically but just cannot generate enough friction to catch fire. The production and mastering robs Steve Morse of a quite good album.

Repeated spins, of course, will unearth some fine music. "Heightened Awareness"’ sharp, chiming guitar ringing alongside a clear, excited bass line, "Marching Orders"’ Celtic tinges, "Mechanical Frenzy"’s frantic echoes of Led Zeppelin and Living Color, and "Midnight Daydream"’s ethereal sleepy soundscape all will impress those who stay with them. If "Great Mountain Spirits" sadly sounds like every rock fan’s worst nightmare on seeing the words ‘rock’ ‘guitar’ and ‘new age’ in the same sentence, "Back Porch"’s down-home acoustic blues jam even overcomes its white-bread hair-metal sheen to set one’s toes to tapping.

Sadly, however, any listener not already a fan or a guitar enthusiast is hardly likely to carve these songs out of the sparkling lacquer finish they are hopelessly buried beneath, making Split Decision a bad choice for any average music buyer. The songs simply cannot breathe, and the album collapses long before its time is up.

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Steve Morse Band

Split Decision

Released: March 26, 2002
Origination Year: 2002
Time: 52:43
Tracks: 12
Produced by: Steve Morse
Engineered by: ??
Mastered by: Jim Brick at Absolute Audio
Style: Studio
Format: CD
Enhancement: None Remastering
Label: Magna Carta Records
Website:
www.stevemorse.com

Heightened Awareness
Busybodies
Marching Orders
Mechanical Frenzy
Great Mountain Spirits
Majorly Up
Gentle Flower, Hidden Beast
Moment's Comfort
Clear Memories
Midnight Daydream
Back Porch
Natural Flow