By 1971, The Moody Blues had built up a wealth of high-quality progressive rock albums, beginning in 1967 with their landmark Days of Future Passed, which is arguably one of the first progressive rock albums. They would continue their conceptual adventures throughout, from stories of exploration of mind and music with The Search of the Lost Chord to the space-age wonderment of their magnum opus, To Our Children's Children's Children, to the social commentary of To Our Children's Children's Children. Their sixth album of the heptalogy, Every Good Boy is decisively not as ambitious as even Days of Future Passed - no grand concepts or stories of a day here, at least from what I could gather. Sitting somewhere in between Question and Lost Chord with its sonic complexity, somehow Every Good Boy can more than hold its own in spite of its potentially lacking ambition. Most of the album is exactly what The Moody Blues does best - lush progressive rock with plenty of variety to keep the train moving along. A welcome addition to their classic seven, and a pretty comfortable embodiment of the group, even if it is not necessarily their finest.
In comparison to A Question of Balance, an album which had deliberately been made more stripped-down as to make it easier to perform live, Every Good Boy sees a bit of recession from this idea. While the music is nowhere near as grand as anything on To Our Children's Children's Children or even Days of Future Passed, it sits in a decisive middle area, most comparable to Lost Chord. This melding of ideas is best seen in the album's most enduring tune, "The Story in Your Eyes," a punching rock number that would fit right in with Question, but with a certain polish and atmosphere that was occasionally lacking in that album. Moments like "One More Time to Live" are the platonic ideal of the Moody Blues sound - poetic lyrics, a certain pop sense, and incredibly lush production that usually incorporates tasteful elements of orchestral music. The back-half of the record has a tremendous flow to it in general, culminating the soaring finale of "My Song," proving to be one of Mike Pinder's most ambitious songs yet, and a boldly confident way to end the album.
The lack of drive to tell a realized concept also, in some ways, allows the album to be more loose. Songs can freely flow between one another without relation, and yet it creates a cohesive style and goal - like a longer Abbey Road medley. Another element of the group that I've always felt benefits their albums is how every group member is capable of writing great material, which also creates plenty of variety in ideas. Ray Thomas has a particular knack for meshing pop and prog, and had been doing it since "Nights in White Satin," and the upbeat and catchy "Our Guessing Game" is one of the album's most defining moments. Outside of Justin Hayward carrying On the Threshold of a Dream and penning the iconic "Question," he has the powerful "You Can Never Go Home" on this record, a soaring rock tune that also serves as an excellent penultimate song towards the album's conclusion. While I find John Lodge to be the most hit-or-miss, when he hits he really hits, and moments like the beautiful "Emily's Song" or the aforementioned "One More Time to Live" showcase his abilities at their most sharp.
Generally, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is ranked as the group's weakest out of the "Classic Seven," but I'm not so sure that's a fair reputation. Not only do I find it to be far more stylistically cohesive and higher in quality than Threshold, but Every Good Boy is the ideal encapsulation of everything that the group was good at. Perhaps this leads many to find it formulaic, but it still stands alone in the group's catalog, not leaning too heavily into their past work at any point, but instead taking what they've learned from Question and expanding upon it just enough to create a new, exciting experience. For being six albums into such an iconic run, the Moodies still manage to bring the goods.
RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯
Listen to Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.
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