It's always the same - you wait 300 reviews for a Moody Blues album, then two come in quick succession. This is another cheap purchase last week, bought before I'd reviewed To Our Children's Children's Children, so expectations aren't too high.
Opening with sitar, noise and manic poetry (did Robert Calvert hear this), we#re quickly into the likeable piece of 60s psych, Ride My See-Saw. Dr Livingstone I Presume has an almost music-hall verse, but the psychedelia feel continues in the chorus.
House of Four Doors flies by leaving no impression, followed by Legend Of A Mind, an engaging little tune about Timothy Leary, with a pointless reprise of House Of Four Doors following.
Voices In The Sky is a bland little ballad, instantly forgettable, but there's a more psychedelic and more interesting feel to The Best Way To Travel. That sitar reappears on the pleasant Visions Of Paradise, and The Actor tries to be an epic but falls short. There's more poetry with The Word, before the finale, Om, a gentle Eastern tinged song which seems to work well, apart from the cute vocal harmonies.
I think there's more to like in this album than in the previous one, but it's really not my thing. It has the feel of nice English boys trying too hard to embrace the wave of psych in the late 1960s, and is unlikely to get regular outings.
2* - a few interesting moments, but nothing that really excites.
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