Label: Deram Records (Europe), 530 662-5
Style: Symphonic Rock
Country: Birmingham, England
Time: 68:17
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 379 Mb
Their last album, In Search of the Lost Chord, was a trippy affair: “Legend of a Mind,” The House of Four Doors,” “Om.” On the Threshold of Dream goes even deeper in its search of the ultimate headphone experience, featuring one of the earliest uses of the EMS VCS 3 synthesizer along with cellos, mellotrons, flutes and what was some very sophisticated engineering for its time. Patterned after The Beatles’ recent albums (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour), Dream wasn’t a concept album, but a collection of songs conceived as an album experience. The album did remarkably well on the charts, reaching #1 in the UK and going gold in the US on the same day as Days of Future Passed. Truly, we had reached the golden age of The Moody Blues.
On closer inspection, not every song on Dream works. Send Me No Wine, Lazy Day and So Deep Within You are hardly the best ideas to come from the respective minds of John Lodge, Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder. But Graeme Edge sounds positively brilliant on this record, Never Comes The Day and Are You Sitting Comfortably are two of the prettiest songs they’ve ever recorded and the combination of The Dream, Have You Heard and The Voyage may be the most sublime nine minutes of Moodies music on record. If I were going to pick a favorite album by The Moody Blues, it would come down to this and Days of Future Passed.
While Justin Hayward, Thomas and Edge had each established their own songwriting style, Lodge and Pinder were still unpredictable. Lodge was more likely to write a rocker (case in point: To Share Our Love), but Pinder was hard to pin down. “So Deep Within You” is an ill-advised attempt at Moodies soul. “Have You Heard,” on the other hand, is an inspired attempt to beat The Beatles at their own game with a better version of “A Day in the Life.” That’s write, I wrote better. No one says you have to agree with me (since I know how thin-skinned Beatles fans can be).
(progrography.com/moody-blues/review-the-moody-blues-on-the-threshold-of-a-dream-1969/)
01. In the Beginning (02:08)
02. Lovely to See You (02:34)
03. Dear Diary (03:56)
04. Send Me No Wine (02:20)
05. To Share Our Love (02:54)
06. So Deep Within You (03:07)
07. Never Comes the Day (04:43)
08. Lazy Day (02:43)
09. Are You Sitting Comfortably (03:29)
10. The Dream (00:58)
11. Have You Heard, Part 1 (01:28)
12. The Voyage (04:11)
13. Have You Heard, Part 2 (02:31)
14. In the Beginning (full version) (03:28)
15. So Deep Within You (extended version) (03:29)
16. Dear Diary (alternate vocal mix) (04:05)
17. Have You Heard (original take) (03:52)
18. The Voyage (original take) (04:19)
19. Lovely to See You (live) (02:26)
20. Send Me No Wine (live) (02:40)
21. So Deep Within You (live) (03:08)
22. Are You Sitting Comfortably (live) (03:38)
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