ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM

In the 1960s, there wasn't such a sharp line between the tripped-out aesthetic of psychedelia and the high ambitions of progressive rock, and with On the Threshold of a Dream the Moodies do a great job of straddling that line. Dear Diary finds the band at their most earthbound - taking the beat sound of the mid-1960s and applying it to the evocation of a dreary daily rut - whilst elsewhere their trippy poetry and experimentation with early prog song structures finds them gearing up to explore higher worlds. It's a little muddled and the concept isn't as well formed as on the previous or subsequent albums, but it's a collection of solid Moody tracks that nicely demonstrates how varied their sound could be.