The second and last album with guitar phenomena Steve Morse on guitar. I know that a lot of Kansas fans didn't think this and "Power" was good, but I don't see why. Steve Morse doesn't do anything better that Kerry Livgren would have done it, but he sure doesn't do it worse either. Anyway, "In the Spirit of Things" is the better one, when it comes to comparing it to "Power", which is natural since, the band had by this album gotten more together and could really call themselves a band.

This can be seen as one of the last good things Steve Walsh did. Not that he's a bad singer today, but on this album he's almost as good as he was in the early Kansas years. This album is filled with emotion from him, as always.

I know that the record company by this time, put some kind of pressure on Kansas to produce hit songs, that were meant to be played on radio. There had obviously been some kind of dry season for the band. With this pressure songwriters from the AOR genre joined the team to get those radio tunes that was asked for. Mark Spiro was one of them, which put his song writing talent in one of the songs, "One Man, One Heart". This one came out real good, but the others that not were written by Kansas, wasn't that good. It was "Once In a Lifetime" and "Stand Beside Me". The first mentioned is quite good to though, but that is mainly because of Steve Walsh and his crying emotion. The rest of the songs on the album are written mainly by Walsh and Morse, which I think seemed to be a real good song writing team. I'm really kind of critic when I talk about this album and it's songs, since I love Kansas, but wanted to put some kind of impartial saying about it. Once again, I love this album and every song on it, but the more common point of view is problably what I've said before.

The best song is of course "Rainmaker". A song that starts out of nothing, and then grows and grows. Steve almost talks more than sings on the verse, since it's a story he's telling about when he was a rainmaker. Problably made up, but it's so beautiful when he breaks up from the talking and sings "In a Kansas town I was a Rainmaker...". The chorus is backed up by Reverend James Cleveland and The Southern California Community Choir.