I am sure I am not the only one who was like when Neal said on the T2 Making-Of that he tries to do something different on every album and not repeat himself. I love his music, but let's be serious.
Given that he is a solo artist and isn't "tied down" to working with specific band members, I'd love to see him mix it up by working on his next solo album with all musicians he has never worked with before. Mike Portnoy and Randy George always do a great job with their playing and writing suggestions, but I gotta think that that contributes a bit to the samey feel his work has. Let him work with all different writers and players and he might spit out something more fresh. Just my thought.
I feel like
Flying Colors (the band and album) offered him that output, to work in an environment where he wasn't the lead writer/vocalist/player/etc. etc. He's also been playing live with a new band, and in fact, in the last 4 years alone, he's played with essentially 5 different live bands - his old European Tour band, Transatlantic, The Testimony 2 Tour band (which is almost like his old Testimony 1 Tour band), his new solo tour band, and Flying Colors. So he's had a lot of different people to play with (although in more than half of those instances, his drummer has been Mike Portnoy).
I do agree, though, that it'd be nice to hear him with some more players in the studio, but he's got a great working relationship with Mike and Randy, and I'd like to think of them as a whole band now, and not just Neal with 2 guest artists that happen to keep appearing on his solo albums. I also like the fact that Neal included two of his new bandmates on
Momentum, as well as Paul Gilbert!
And just a heads up, for anyone interested, after I finish my Genesis Survivor, I will start a Neal Morse Survivor a few weeks after that (after some short DT-Related Survivors), so anyone who wants to participate should gear up for that! I'll be including ALL of Neal's solo studio releases, from
Neal Morse and
It's Not Too Late, all the way up to
Momentum - 9 albums total, 118 songs... it'll be a long one!
-Marc.