STRANGE TIMES

Do you sometimes get fooled by a positive review and buy a new album from your long- time favourite band, even if you know you'd better avoid their post-70's stuff? I put my blame on a respectable weekly non-music magazine. How could the guy say that Moodies were better than ever since the disbanding in '72? So I expected to get something else than the usual bunch of sweet pop ballads by Hayward and Lodge known from the previous mediocre albums. Nah, mostly this is just the same, only with a better production and some minor highlights. The large number of songs doesn't help much.

'Sooner Or Later' has them singing in turns and it's maybe the freshest song. Ray Thomas has his little pretty number 'My Little Lovely'. (More contribution by him would have helped the album, as always.) Graeme Edge speaks - he sounds older than others - most of the slightly pretentious lyrics of majestic finale 'Nothing Changes' (I like the last line "and life is still a simple game" that refers to the days of the classic lineup).

Hayward's mostly acoustic number 'The Swallow' is good, maybe the only that could stand comparison to some lesser early songs. Of Lodge songs the most give nothing valuable to the album, neither is Hayward nowhere near his best writing. I had to sell this CD away and buy one of the classic 7 (that I naturally already had all in some form) to do justice to my long MB relationship.