THE LIGHT

Listening to The Light gives me a sudden appreciation for Kansas' Leftoverture, an appreciation which Spock's Beard must certainly have shared while recording The Light. Spock's Beard draw nearly every trick and sound on The Light from that classic (as well as notable scatterings of other classic Symphonic bands) and mix it with a bit of Neal Morse's distinguished modern style. The result isn't too pleasing. The Light is unfocused, disjointed, and most importantly simply not enjoyable. The melodies oscillate between boring pop and boring prog, and playing the originality card is really out of the question.

The two weakest points of the album come from the Morse brothers. Neal's vocals leave much to be desired. At best he's mediocre and at his worst he's intolerable. Also, for every nice, vintage sound he achieves on the keys, there's another that just sounds purely dated. Secondly, Alan's lead guitar really prevents me from getting any enjoyment from the instrumental passages. I can't think of a applicable word to describe his tone, so I shall just say I find it horrible. And he does not redeem this quality by his playing. There are a good bit of enjoyable parts thread throughout the songs, however, they're always outnumbered by exponentially worse passages. This is especially true in The Water which contains a section Neal himself apologized for.

For those who enjoy the whole Neal Morse production though, I suspect this will be a solid 3/3.5 star album. For those unfamiliar with his style this isn't the best way to be exposed to it. For those critics of his style looking to be converted, there's certainly no revelation to be found here.

And if by chance Dave Meros happens to stumble across this review, for all my harsh words I was thoroughly pleased by your playing, but that, unfortunately, was about the only thing.