ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM

This is (almost) an excellent album! The Moody Blues had just established themselves as forerunners of the progressive rock movement (at the time) with 'Days of future passed' and 'In Search of the Lost Chord'. In 1969 with this album they obviously fell away from that mantle, and would never return! With this album they go back to the 'Magnificent Moodies' sound a bit, with more Motown and straight-ahead rock influencing this one. To prove the point, the Four Tops covered one of the songs on this album, 'So deep within you'. However, the album closes with the very progressive 'Have you heard/The Voyage', possibly the Moodies' most progressive song.

Even if this is pop music, it is excellent pop music, and often innovative. My favourites are the slightly Gaelic sounding 'Send me no wine' with a beautiful vocal chorus, the catchy 'Lovely to see you again' and my favourite song is the all-out rocking anthem 'To share our love', which has a lot of energy. I also like Ray Thomas' 'Lazy Daze', a kind of humorous traditional English song about how nice Sunday is for a working man. I didn't like his other song 'Dear Diary', despite some well done flute arrangements and Ray sining through a vocal synthesiser (in '69?) It's a slow, plodding song that slows the album up near the start.

'Never comes the day' is a more complex song, it begins as a slow acoustic ballad, has a bridge full of swirling mellotron and the chorus is sought of up-tempo traditional folk/campfire music, complete with some good harmonica playing. This is a very heartfelt song. The album closes with Mike Pinders 'Have you heard?/The Voyage'. The verses are smooth folk/psych, and there is an extended instrumental section that is eerie classical music, quite powerful stuff! That takes the whole song thing about 8 minutes and was quite an achievement in that time, but two years later would seem like a small fish in a big sea.

CONCLUSION: This is one of the most enjoyable Moody Blues albums, and possibly their best, as always is full of great melodies, but this album has consistently good material and some of their best. Four Stars.