| Track: | Rating: | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Take Your Chances | | | | ||
| 2. Is It Just A Game | | | | ||
| 3. One Again | | | |||
| 4. Moving Mountains | | | |||
| 5. Silverbird | | | | ||
| 6. Lost And Found | | | |||
| 7. Goodbye | | | | ||
| 8. Who Knows | | | |||
| 9. The Best Is Yet To Come | | | |||
| 10. The Lights Are Low | | | | ||
All songs by Justin Hayward except "Silverbird" by Justin Hayward and Jeff Wayne, and "The Best Is Yet To Come" by Clifford Ward.
The Moody Blues were never the best progressive band to begin with, and are generally regarded (with reason) as having fallen into a serious corporate-rock rut by the mid-1980s. One would hardly expect much of a 1985 solo album from their lead singer and guitarist and, indeed, Moving Mountains is almost completely disposable. Perhaps the best that can be said of this release is that it could have easily been much worse.
To give some credit where due, Hayward is hardly the most degenerated talent within the MBs. Ray Thomas's role within the group has been a mystery for quite some time now, and a cursory listen to The Other Side Of Life (1986) suggests that Hayward was putting more into the project than were bassist John Lodge and drummer Graham Edge. However much the band lost between "Nights In White Satin" and "Your Wildest Dreams", they still possessed Hayward's distinctive vocal charm. This may not be much, but it's enough to prevent most of what he appears on from being a total disaster.
On Moving Mountains, Hayward's vocals are essentially as good as they've always been. But as with Annie Haslam's self-titled album from 1989 (which Hayward appears on), this album serves to prove that a good voice can't always save a terrible song. And there are more than a few second-or-third-rate numbers here.
As is typical for albums of this sort, the best of the pop tracks is served up first. "Take Your Chances" begins with a big drum and bass sound and a melody that seems like a cross between "Question" and "Gemini Dream". The song follows the standard Hayward/MBs formula, with the usual trite romantic lyrics and flightly vocals (who else would even try to get away with "we may never pass this way again" in their chorus). It could have easily been just another throwaway album track, but the performance and production here are good enough to make the number semi-respectable. It's fairly obvious that this track was meant to sound as much like the MBs as possible, right down to the Moraz-esque keyboard line; I can only imagine that this was the lead-off single. Much less than essential, this is still decent enough for lightweight pop.
The album's decline begins with "Is It Just A Game", a more restrained pop ditty that sounds as though it could have been designed to accompany some "inspirational" moment in a Hollywood film of the era. Hayward's voice is the only thing that gives this track any reason for existing. The first guitar solo is quite unimpressive; the second is a bit better. There's not much to talk about here.
"One Again" comes fairly close to being the nadir of this release. A synth-reggae track of the worst type, its lyric consists of little more than a string of cliches leading towards some vague "feel-good" message about the earth being "made one" (sung, of course, with the sincerity of someone trying to cash in on the standard lyrical trends of the day). Hayward's efforts at approaching a Jamaican "feel" vocally don't quite work out, though that shouldn't be a surprise. The track isn't overtly wretched enough to be intolerable, but it's not terribly good either. A synth solo appears at the end to no real purpose or effect.
"Moving Mountains" features a decent acoustic guitar and drum presence, with good production and mixing on both instruments throughout the track. That's about the only good thing that I can say about this number, a run-of-the-mill lyrical ballad which climaxes in the trite cry of "We can move mountains". The singing is a bit sub-standard here as well. A guitar solo at the end of the track is tolerable, but not worth very much.
"Silverbird" is easily the most ambitious track on the album and, at over seven minutes, is pretty much the only thing here to escape from the "pop formula" mode. Although it's easily the best number here in a general sense, the mess of its arrangement and the ultimate banality of its main section prevent it from being as good as it strives to be. The music in the instrument sections is as close as the album comes to being "progressive", though the semi-Hawaiian guitar solo might suggest something else. The backing vocals on this track could have been arranged better, though their prominent role at the end of the piece works fairly well. The lyric, involving the protagonist's wish for a lost love to return to him, is only slightly less banal than the rest of the album. A half-success at best.
"Lost And Found" returns the album to its usual course -- a vaguely cabaret number with soft rock trapping, there just isn't much to discuss here (unless completist fans of lounge-jazz piano are lurking among the Tentative Reviews readership). Hayward's vocals save the track from utter disaster, but not by much.
Along not structurally different from the other tracks around it, "Goodbye" is a bit better -- acoustic guitar stylings dominate the work as it unravels a slightly more interesting version of the now-familiar Hayward formula. "Who Knows", the following track, is most notable for possessing a hint of purpose in the lyrics, though not so much so in the music (which actually seems vaguely disco-ish ... could this be a holdout track from Hayward's critically-panned 1980 dance album?). A mainstream saxophone solo punctuates the banality of the track.
"The Best Is Yet To Come" alternates between "daytime soaps" instrumental flourishes and tacky, "inspirational" vocals. This number is virtually without merit.
Finally, he have "The Lights Are Low", a bonus track. The similarity of this number to "The Other Side Of Life" would suggest that it was written between 1986 and 1989, though the liner notes are unclear on this matter. The lyric is notable for a fleeting moment of self-awareness, but is otherwise just another superficial love song. The higher rating granted to this track is almost entirely due to its two guitar solos, which are actually not that bad.
And thus ends another tedious milestone in Hayward's 1980s career. I probably would not have purchased this album had I not found it in a seventy-cent bin, and I would not advise anyone save MBs completists to pay anything more.
Perhaps it would have worked better as an EP ...
(review originally posted to alt.music.yes on 4 April 1998)