The Moody Blues' reunion album faithfully recreates a signature sound almost certain to be regarded as tomorrow's camp: simple rock and folk tunes blown up into a pseudo-classical, quasi-religious choral music, driven by plodding, militaristic rhythm tracks and mixed into a turgid murk that blurs the distinction between rock and orchestral instrumentation. The sound's density obscures a multitude of inadequacies–clumsy arrangements, poor playing, mediocre singing and painfully naive verse.

Though there's a touching sincerity about this quintet's collective persona as unspoiled, aging hippies continuing to grope for happy endings and final essences, sincerity is no substitute for ideas, particularly in an idiom so fraught with Wagnerian pretensions. While Octave claims two passable songs–"Had to Fall in Love" and "Driftwood," both by Justin Hayward–neither approaches the memorability of "Nights in White Satin" and "Question," the only instances in which the Moody Blues have created tunes to match the grandiosity of their aural style. Octave is another cathedral of twigs built on a mud slide. (RS 273)

STEPHEN HOLDEN