THE MOODY BLUES

The sounds are a bit fuller, but their choice of fading in and out the songs into each other is appalling, because some songs sound abruptly cut. The sound of the album is a bit dense as well, and there is a recent "remix" version that tries to improve some things, but also loses some things, just to show how convoluted the sound of the album is. As for the songs, there is the mix of rockers, folkier, experimental, ballads. The album features a bit better songwriting than the predecessor, but the experimental and epic features are tamer (the surprise coming from Beyond, a experimental instrumental with amazing mellotron sounds composed surprisingly by Edge, who didn't compose anything but the poems before). The "core" of the album is Beyond, Out and In, Gypsy and Eternity Road. There are amazing mellotron sounds in all of these songs and they are all very strong, solid (Gypsy is even a minor success of the band) and Eternity Road shows a brief moment of the band jamming, which is very, very rare and interesting. The closing song, Watching and Waiting, is a superb ballad, one of the most beautiful Hayward performances, and finishes the album in a high note. It is also a bit nice to have a song with sitars and oriental influences, although the mellotron and cello make the song a forerunner of the distorted loudness wars songs.

Too bad that despite being a very pleasant album, it is less daring than the predecessors, and the convoluted and blurry sound with too many elements make the listening experience less interesting. Above all, the albums more or less puts Moodies back in the progressive rock evolution. They got too comfortable with the formula and never tried to push many boundaries.

A collection of run-of-the-mill tunes, with a mix of everything that was fashionable in the late sixties except from prog and not much psychedelic. We have some bits of blues, folk, beat, country, garage rock, soul. The flute and mellotron give a little flair for some tunes, but most of the arrangements are a bit shy even compared to Moody Blues standards. One of the best things in those songs is to see the talents of the underrated guitarist Justin Hayward moving between the most different styles with flawless execution.

Of course, it is not only that, because there is the latest suite, which is a great song with spoken word poem, this time over electronic sounds, a beautiful ballad and the amazing The Voyage, which is the most grandiose thing done by a band not augmented by orchestral arrangements. It is ironic that such amazing song is in one of their less daring albums. That would be a feature that would kinda repeat itself in all their latter albums, unfortunately.

WIth its ups and downs, it is still a great late 60s album.