On The Threshold of A Dream (1969)

WARNING!!

These reviews are given in the spirit of a personal editorial and of personal opinion. If you would find yourself offended by these views and criticisms within the body of these reviews, please do not read further. It is not our intention to offend or injure someone's views on their favourite band. We wrote these as one-time fans who now, after many years, revisited these albums and wanted to write fair and unbiased reviews of The Moody Blues' material. If indeed, a member of The Moody Blues does happen to read these reviews, please take into consideration that these are simply opinions. These reviews present an alternate perspective.
Thank You,
Shawn and Andrew Dow,
March, 2007

Album Review by Andrew Dow

Album Review by Shawn Dow

Album Review by Andrew Dow

The Moody Blues had a second hit on their hands, and success started to trickle into their lives, not to mention a bit of pomposity to boot. "Ride My See-Saw" and "Legend of A Mind" from "In Search of The Lost Chord" guaranteed a third release from the band. Now, popular rock has a small myth: Any band that gets to a third album generally solidifies it's sound and proves itself to the masses. "Yes" didn't have any true success till "The Yes Album", which then propelled them to greater things with "Fragile", and "Close To The Edge". King Crimson released "Lizard", a jazz-fusion progressive rock album that showed Crimson in full flight in their field. The Moodies however, released "On The Threshold of A Dream", once again, more mellow yellow.

In The Beginning: I remember this opening frightening me as a kid. The steady high-pitch with a slight revelry theme in the background, slowly climaxing with the mellotron, groaning away. Hayward again voicing an Edge concept of Man's creation by, a machine? Or is it meant to be how machine controls Man? Then suddenly, a hippy comes out and says how we have to "keep cool", and keep "thinking free". This would obviously tap into the hippy feeling of how they're on the outside and that no one can control their lives except themselves to find their own destiny. Showing how, "The Man" or government, which is computer's "Big Brother", tries to oppress the little hippy. Once again the Moodies use an interesting opening and totally blow it with some silly hippy pseudo-intellectual babble, instead of doing something more challenging musically. All they had to do was use their little mellotron to sound heavy.

Lovely To See You: Justin Hayward pulls out what is probably his first rocker. Well, semi-rocker. A really nice electric guitar line, which guides the songs entire melody. Backed by acoustic guitars and a multitude of tambourines swung by resident shaker Ray Thomas. A nice middle 8 with a soft ride cymbal breaks the song up from being too repetitive. The songs fades out with a nice guitar by Hayward. A very tasteful guitarist at times. The song doesn't wear out its welcome and ends just right. This album may be off to a better start. Or is it?

Dear Diary: The Moody Blues do the blues. Now, I don't think The Moodies are really a blues band, especially with a flute as the main instrument. Thomas' voice sung through some processing sounds neat, and surprisingly the song has a couple changes. A quick middle 8, which turned into a Moodies standard to break up their A,B A,B pattern. Now it's A,B, A,B,C A,B. After the song goes into it's second full repeat, the song drags in it's lethargy.

Send Me No Wine: Lodge's polite little hoedown diddy. It sounds ever so mannerly and straight ahead, only to have a mellotron in the background groaning out some pitch-bending again. This sounds like old folks music to tap our little toes to and nod our heads back and forth. The bass run is nice, but we now have a wall of acoustic guitars to fill in the gap. Its so easy to fill in a song that has little in it, with strumming acoustic guitars. Nothing new or progressive here.

To Share Our Love: The Moodies do The Beatles again. Lodge's second tune in a row, turns out to be a rocker. The first real straight-ahead rock song by this band I've ever heard. Hayward pulls out some tasteful double guitar licks. Pinder leads the chorus of the entire band in the vocals. No annoying mellotron to groan and ruin the song. It does tend to go on a bit, but it's not too bad. The ending is rather nice actually.

So Deep Within You: The Moodies get soulful. Pinder tries to sound like he's got some soul. Complete with groaning mellotron, tons of things that shake, a flute to accent the songs melody and some guitar backing. The song has more changes than most Moodies tunes, but it does drag towards the end. The big chorus of vocals in an ascending verse near the end sounds awful and silly. Hayward plays more electric in the background at the end, but it's so drowned out in the mix that we can't hear him play.

Never Comes The Day: Apparently this one was a minor hit, Hayward's ballad on the album comes off as a power-ballad, complete with bombast and a chorus of singing for it's, (or course), chorus. The harmonica playing in the back of the chorus sounds like a pipe organ and comes off as dull. The dynamics are nicely handled but the songs is a familiar A,B pattern again, and is boring on it's second time around, all over again. Dull, dull, dull, sad, wimpy, whining, boring and draggy. This will no doubt be a pattern The Moodies as a whole have come to find as familiar. Their fans like this, so they will continue to please their fans, not their own personal musical vision. Or, maybe this is all they are capable of doing.

Lazy Day: A chorus of vocals again opens this Thomas silly diddy about the lazy feeling of a Sunday afternoon. They do capture the tone all right: lazy. After "Never Comes The Day", a rocker was sorely needed here, because by now, I'm getting lazy. All Thomas' harmonica solo does is repeat the main melody. Hoaky and sleep inducing.

Are You Sitting Comfortably: Hayward goes into a lazy mode alongside Thomas, this their second writing together. This tune eclipses all the other slow draggers on this album. At least it is sung well, displays a nice little flute solo by Thomas and a nice backing beat to give the song some pulse. Hayward's vocal gives the song a very dream-like, wispy quality. Probably the best tune alongside of "Lovely To See You Again".

The Dream: Edge goes into familiar territory again by introducing a Pinder "epic", just like on "In Search of The Lost Chord". Again we are treated to a mellotron exercise in groaning and pitch bending with a revisiting of the opening high-pitch. Heavy pseudo-hippy-intellectuality here.

Have You Heard (Part I): This is where the album moves into low gear. A slow tune by Pinder that is actually quite nice and again goes into a bit of a dream-state, but at least this one has a melody and a good vocal performance by Pinder However, it moves into...

The Voyage: I wouldn't let anyone hear this piece of drivel. Mellotrons groaning, trying to sound symphonic and orchestral. Although the Moodies wanted to get away from an orchestra, they kept coming back to instruments like the oboe in the middle playing a main theme and cellos plunking out a similar theme. It sounds like a bizarre nursery rhyme, accented by terrible cymbal clashes and sputtering flute toots. A piano comes in to play the same little nursery rhyme, building to a climax. What exactly is "The Voyage"? Pinder pomposity at it's worst.

Have You Heard (Part II): Well, if you didn't hear it the first time, well hear it is again. More padding. Not that the tune isn't nice, I just wish "Have You Heard" didn't have to be book ended to "The Voyage". I simply skip over The Voyage and get right to this part. However, it does seem a tad repetitive. The song ends with the opening high-pitch frequency from the opening of the album. The disc simply fades out, but on the vinyl the frequency ends abruptly as the tone arm of the record player moved to the run-off of the album. If you didn't have a return mechanism on your turntable, it simply repeated over and over again. Interesting little gimmick. But the Moodies are full of them.

Summary

Like I mentioned before, the third album of any band seems to have certain significance. The bands sound usually becomes established and they continue on in that vein. The Moodies are no exception. They had learned that the audience that they attracted liked their hippy trappings and pseudo-intellectuality, and so they gave them more of the same. The album has some brief glimpses of interest, marred however by the ever present gimmick device of choice for them, the mellotron. An instrument usually used sparingly by other bands like Yes, King Crimson and The Beatles to mention a few. Those bands used it creatively, whereas The Moody Blues used it as a crutch. Some would say the mellotron "anchored" the band with Pinder the mind of the band. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The Moodies would show time and again that they needed something to give them an edge or at least something that sounded orchestral. The mellotron suited and filled in the huge gaps in their songs. Songs like "Lovely To See You", "Are You Sitting Comfortably" and "To Share Our Love" to a lesser extent, showed them as current and changing, where other songs like "Lazy Day", "Dear Diary", "Never Comes The Day", "So Deep Within You", all groan and are tiresome. Downers. Real downers. The mood never lightens much on this album and rarely rocks. Just let your drug of choice fill in the blanks and this may be a great album. To me, not a strong outing for the MB5.

Star Rating (out of 5)

*1/2 out of ***** stars

Album Review by Shawn Dow

Watch for an upcoming Review by Shawn Dow