Neal Morse & The Resonance – River of Light

Only two years on from their remarkable debut album, No Hill For A Climber – Neal Morse & The Resonance are continuing the journey with their second album, River of Light. As Morse explains, “Following the success of No Hill For A Climber – and some really great live shows in the summer of 2025 – we knew that we wanted to make more music together, so we started kicking around ideas in October 2025. We spent much more time on this one and wound up having a lot of ideas: at one point it looked like it might be a double album! Then we cut it down to a single, which I think works great.”

Musically, the album contains a mix of ideas from all of the band members, particularly guitarist Andre Madatian and vocalist Johnny Bisaha, as Morse explains: “On the album you can really hear what these guys have brought to the table. Partly because of their ages, they are influenced by bands like Rush and 90s rock, which I think is really cool. In fact, we had so many ideas that just paring them down, fitting them together and creating a flow musically was quite a challenge. The end section is a real favorite of mine and Walk on Water and Shine Until Tomorrow are great rock singles that fans will love. But some of the ideas and time signatures the other guys brought were challenging to the point where I wondered initially if I could play them live (laughs)!”  Indeed, Morse believes that the sheer quality of all of the playing makes River of Light stand very tall musically, with Philip Martin’s intense and mature drumming being one of many highlights.