All male Pacific Northwest sextet Groove for Thought's debut CD is here, not surprisingly titled "Groove for Thought." We last saw GFT at the 2005 Harmony Sweeps Finals, where they won both the Best Original Song award for group member Kevin Kunz' "Walk the Straighter Road" and the National Championship. "Groove" is an excellent, jazzy, beautifully arranged album, but we need to warn a cappella purists that there is a lot of accompaniment with these 14 songs. Our favorites are the two pure a cappella tunes, Kevin's wonderful arrangement of "Joy to the World," and Billy Joel's "And So It Goes." We also once again enjoyed "Walk the Straighter Road," which has some light piano accompaniment. Kevin's hot, jazzy originals "Lay It Back," "A Better Place," "Gotta Lotta Lemons," "My Perfect Day," all accompanied, are also very good; as is Chick Corea's "La Fiesta." The Kelly Kunz-arranged hymn "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" completes our favorites. GFT has some of the best original writing and arranging we've heard and a clean, pure sound that needs no accompaniment of any kind to blow us away!.

Listen to Joy To The World in RealAudio.