1 - Voices in the Sky
2 - The Best Way To Travel
3 - Visions of Paradise
4 - The Actor
5 - The Word
6 - Om
Side Two
“Voices in the Sky” (Hayward): Aah! That’s nice! The road to self-discovery opens with the gentle sounds of Ray’s flute and Justin’s voice, a combination I find utterly delightful and positively therapeutic. After a complete shutout on side one, Justin offers up three compositions on side two, all reflective pieces brimming with emotional impact. Sorry, Mr. Spock, but life is illogical, and the only way you know you’re on the road to self-discovery is if you feel it.
The composition is divided into three distinct groups: paired verses devoted to natural wonders, paired verses devoted to human activity and two renditions of the bridge containing the Eureka moment appearing after each set of paired verses.
Justin made a wise choice in choosing two of the most beautiful songbirds to represent the wonders of nature: the bluebird and the nightingale. His choice turned out to be quite prescient: “Researchers from Kings College London published a study in 2018 testing the effects of exposure to nature on mental health. Using an app to track people’s interactions with nature, they showed that birdsong (among other things) improved people’s mental well-being. Birdsong was not only relaxing, but made people more deliberate—it reduced what psychologists call impulsivity.” (Source: Gulo In Nature). Though Justin wishes he could understand the meaning embedded in the bluebird’s song offerings, he’s happy to take a moment and listen to the nightingale “harmonize the wind.”
The music shifts from pastoral to intense in the bridge as Justin wonders about the origins of his newfound interest in nature and finds the answers in the setting where life first emerged:
Just what is happening to me
I lie awake with the sound of the sea
Calling to me
The second set of verses is equally compelling, but for different reasons. In the age of the Generation Gap, Justin wants to hear the songs of the old and the young:
Old man, passing by
Tell me what you sing
Though your voice be faint
I am listening
Voices in the sky
Children with a skipping rope
Tell me what you sing
Play time is nearly gone
The bell’s about to ring
Voices in the sky
In short, he chooses to engage with the world instead of limiting his experience to a single social clique. Though the events he describes are hardly mind-blowing, I think that’s the point—as we go about our busy lives, we tend to pay scant attention to everyday experiences and miss out on the simple joys they can provide.
“The Best Way to Travel” (Pinder): I’ve always liked this song for its brief trips into the blues scale and its key-defying resolution: the verses are in D major, but the resolution chord is B, which resolves to the secondary key of E major, punctuated by the E-G-A-E closing guitar riff. In addition to that break from the norm, I also approve of the underlying message: “Hey, humans! You were blessed with brains and imagination, so why not use them for a change?” I would have appended the phrase, “you dumb fucks,” but that would be quite un-Moodie-ish.
And you can fly
High as a kite, if you want to
Faster than light, if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel
The basic arrangement in the verse segments is mid-tempo rock, combining muscular acoustic guitar (played by Pinder), electric guitar (Hayward) and emphatic bass and skip-beat drums from the rhythm section of Lodge and Edge. Pinder’s vocals are calm and steady, strengthened in the closing couplet with harmonies from Mr. Thomas. The centerpiece of the song is the magic created by the mellotron in concert with stereophonic sound.
“Visions of Paradise” (Hayward, Thomas): The combination of Justin’s marvelous voice and Ray’s sensitive flute is a match made in musical heaven, and the arrangement creates a sonic environment suitable for reflection. The opening passage features a warm, downward figure on the flute from C to E minor that turns out to be a bit of musical foreshadowing. The verses are unique in that the lovely melody is set to a single chord (C major), but though a sitar enters the soundscape about a third of the way through the song, Justin and Ray avoided the temptation to turn the piece into a drone song, employing the sitar to provide counterpoint arpeggios in sync with Justin’s acoustic guitar.
Continuing the theme of imagination, “Visions of Paradise” validates the fundamental truth that you’ll never go anywhere if you don’t have a clear idea of where you’re going. You have to envision paradise if you want to create paradise. The main obstacle to “Paradise on Earth” is that human beings cannot agree on what constitutes paradise and are unlikely to do so in the near or distant future, so your only option at present is to create your own version of Eden and maybe find others who share your vision. The narrator’s visions are two-fold, with one involving the personal and the other the universal. The personal vision has already come true in the form of unconditional love between romantic partners:
The sounds in my mind just come to me
Come see, come see
And the call of her eyes makes waterfalls
Of me, of me
In the garden of her love I’ll stay awhile
To be, to be
Though relationships can go sour, this path to enlightenment represents his best shot. At this point, Ray repeats the downward run from C to E minor, where we will remain during the brief bridge. Here the narrator presents his universal vision... to which you might respond, “Good luck with that.”
Visions of paradise, cloudless skies I see
Rainbows on the hill, blue onyx on the sea
As it is more than highly unlikely that he will love long enough to experience a pristine earthly environment, you may ask, “Why waste your energy on something that ain’t gonna happen?” Because giving up guarantees that your vision will never come to fruition—and living in hope is better than living in misery.
“The Actor” (Hayward): Sticking to the theme of relationship-as-refuge presented in “Visions of Paradise,” Justin’s romantic side is at its best in this wonderful love song enhanced by Pinder’s “orchestration.” What I enjoy most about Justin’s love songs is his penchant for placing the relationship in the larger context of daily life instead of presenting a series of trite love song clichés:
I hope I don’t have to answer the question, “What does a love song have to do with enlightenment?” but I will anyway. Forming a deep, lasting bond with another human being is the enlightenment experience par excellence. When two people fully commit to unconditional love for one another, they don’t need acid to banish the ego because they know that one will care for the other and vice versa.
“Om” (Pinder, Thomas): The sacred word has many meanings and is employed in several Asian religions; for purposes of this analysis, the definition I found in a Harvard dissertation will work best: “OM serves as a sonic realization of the divine.” From a practical standpoint, its use in meditation serves to remove distractions and open the door to inner peace.
While I’m sure most rock critics of the day would have labeled the piece sacrilegious, only a few even bothered to mention it in their reviews, except in passing. I find the song rather calming and would firmly resist any accusations of pretentiousness. The basic arrangement has an earthy, rural feel with its light touches of flute, sitar and tabla, evoking images of pilgrims heading down dusty paths to the temple. Ray and Mike take turns singing the verse lines, and both of them sound cool, calm and collected. Other than a tempo change midstream and the powerful sound of voices raised in unison, there isn’t a whole lot of drama for the moribund to complain about. In my opinion, “Om” proves that the Moodies were serious about their interest in Eastern philosophy, making it the perfect closer for an album concerned with the search for enlightenment.
Rolling Stone rarely let up on the Moodies; in the Rolling Stone Album Guide, they spewed this bit of vitriol: “No major band has so relentlessly purveyed nonsense as have the Moodies... Were it not for their titanic success, in fact, they might easily be dismissed as an odd and overlong joke.”
I guess by “nonsense,” they meant “peace, love, and happiness.” Since we continue to live in a world filled with war, hate and misery, I would argue that the Moody Blues are more relevant than ever. In Search of the Lost Chord was one of many works of the era that suggested ways out of our never-ending troubles, and it ranks as one of the best. Revisiting their oeuvre has heightened my awareness of the value of their contributions.
From: https://altrockchick.com/2025/08/31/the-moody-blues-in-search-of-the-lost-chord-classic-music-review/
