MORSEFEST 2015

Here another live release of Neal Morse or I can say more of "Morsefest" only after a few months the band decided to do another show in the same church that for the DVD Morsefest 2014. This is more than 5 hours of music with 2 complete albums that are played: "Question Mark" and "Sola Scriptura". Those songs have been played before in previous tours and also on the 2008's DVD. So that's where I had troubled with. Those two albums have been released for so long that I did lose the excitement of fresh material. "Question Mark" is a very good album but I didn't have the same fun to watched it here. I did enjoy the 2 songs "The Call" and The Grand Experiment" from the first Neal Morse band album and the cover "MacArthur Park", but I didn't like "New Jerusalem" and the acoustic "Waterfall". Neal did for the first time an epic song of 25 minutes from his first solo album "A Wole New Trip" which is again not his best song.

In the first set, I thought I was having a nightmare when I saw the priest made an appearance in the middle of a song to give his religious speech pitch. I don't think this intrusion belongs in a music concert. But knowing Neal, I knew this was his kind of thing that didn't bother him and was in fact prepared. During the show, there was also some dancing, I didn't think again that this animation was adding something to the show.

In the second set, I jump up off my chair for the first time when I saw Nick D'Vigilio behind the drum set playing one of the best song of Spock's Beard "At The End of the Day". They did another song from Spock's Beard "Wind at my Back" before closing things with a medley of Transatlantic "Whirlwind" album. As for the picture quality and sound, it seems that with each DVD, those things improve as the light show. The 1-hour documentary is very professional and done with some real technician, and also with some good interviews and good stories. The next Morsefest recording is already scheduled and will feature the latest Neal Morse Band album which I will definitely enjoy more than this one.

Let me say first of all that I haven't yet watched the DVDs in their entirety, so this review is of the 4 CDs that come with this set. Sola Scriptura and ? were for a long time my favourite Neal Morse albums (surpassed now by Similitude) so this was a live set that I really had to get. The two albums are performed with added orchestra and choir and some sections are lengthened - to the extent that the last song of Sola Scriptura is on a separate CD. The embellishments in my opinion are an improvement on the studio albums (excellent as those were). In addition to the two albums we have a selection of Spock's Beard, Transatlantic and Neal Morse Band songs. The first set of songs are the weakest part of the album for me. I really can't get into "Go The Way You Go" at all, whilst "A Whole Nother Trip" does have some really good bits it doesn't seem to flow like some of Neal's other epics. On the other hand, the songs after Sola Scriptura are all very good, from the beautiful acoustic "Waterfall" to the Whirlwind medley and featuring Nick D'Vigilio on a couple of tracks plus the Christian guitarist Phil Keaggy who makes a few appearances throughout. I'm really glad I bought this and I must get around to watching the DVDs sometime soon!