It seems Columbia City resident Keith “BigMeow” Roman has been a busy in the studio since the release of 2021’s concept album Bell: Songs About Larry Bell and His Aircraft. It was an impressive 12-track album with proceeds going to the Larry Bell Museum in Mentone.

Three years later ’ol BigMeow has returned with None the Wiser. In Roman’s words, “After aiming for (and missing) that narrow demographic of aviation fans/Prog rockers with the Bell album, I have returned with nine somewhat more normal tunes that you can dance to.” 

None the Wiser does keep a more consistent, prog rock-oriented path, with funky drums and Primus-esque bass lines. But this wouldn’t be a Roman record without a little musical indulgence, and that comes in the form of a 21-minute closer about the Great Toledo War. 

The album opens on the funkified title track “None the Wiser,” a prog-heavy groove fest that touts Roman’s self-created rhythm section. “Death Cat” continues Roman’s long-running feline love with a drum-and-bass rocker that would make Bootsy Collins blush. Roman goes heavy on the slap bass and the vernacular here, mixing Rastafarian rhythms, funky bass, and old European strings for good measure. 

Songs range from “Jonah,” where Roman gives us the story of Jonah and the Whale as if Rush were performing it, to the Primus-meets-Sunday Sermon of “No Breakfast for You” and the funk rock boogie of “Don’t Let Them Steal Your Soul.” It all builds up to the 21-minute opus “(the epic of) The Great Toledo War.” Less a nod to Rush’s 2112 and more if Genesis and Corky St. Clair got together to write a Broadway musical on an obscure Michigan/Ohio war over trade routes on the Maumee River. 

Roman has laid at our feet yet another slab of prog/biblical/historic rock for us to sink our teeth into. None the Wiser will satiate your prog appetites, and then some.