THE NEAL MORSE BAND: THE GRAND EXPERIMENT

The Grand Experiment is the first album credited to The Neal Morse Band. Neal and his long-term musical partners Mike Portnoy and Randy George are joined by two new permanent band members. Eric Gillette and Bill Hubauer add a new dimension to the sound, particularly in the vocal department, although they are also tremendous musicians.

The opening song, The Call, starts with an a Capello vocal before launching into full blown prog. This is a mini epic with a lot of energy. The title track is more hard rock than prog, not a bad song but not one of my favourites. Waterfall is a beautiful acoustic song with excellent vocal harmonies. The clunker on the album is Agenda. I know the lyrics are meant to be ironic but the song does nothing for me and sounds out of place after the sublime Waterfall. The final song, Alive Again, is for me the highlight of the album. It stands with All Of The Above and Seeds Of Gold as one of the best 25-30 minute epics Neal has recorded. I particularly love the way the band use a simple musical theme which is repeated with different instruments/sounds and rhythms. Also how they can go from classical to heavy metal to ballad apparently seamlessly. Bill Hubauer's vocal contribution here is outstanding.

I bought the single disc version but I have heard New Jerusalem and MacArthur Park, either of which I would have preferred on the main disc instead of Agenda, to be honest.

I will give 5 stars for the two epics and Waterfall, three for the title track and one for Agenda. Seeing as the two weaker tracks are both short, that averages out as a solid 4 stars.