I discovered all too recently that the Moody Blues weren’t the sort of schlocky, soulless dad rock that I had expected them to be.

Instead, they were charming pioneers that guided much of psychedelic pop’s shift to progressive rock—much closer to The Zombies and Pink Floyd than the Allman Brothers.

After being captured by the incredible Days of Future Passed and the otherworldly On the Threshold of a Dream, I had been searching for the album between them. Having now acquired it, it’s everything I had hoped for.

Truth be told, Days of Future Passed wasn’t totally intended to be a proper album—their label had initiated the project with the intention of showcasing their studio’s versatility: one side of the LP would showcase their house orchestra, while another would showcase one of their pop groups. But somewhere along the line, the Moody Blues decided to combine the two groups into a cohesive project.

And while Days was a staggering work, the delineation between pop group and orchestra was quite clear at times. In Search of the Missing Chord on the other hand combines both elements into one spellbinding whole. None of it sounds like the two entities started in separate places and somehow met in the middle: it was composed from the onset as a unified voice.

Guitars, keyboards, and drum sets mingle with strings, flutes, and timpanis. The vocals, traded between four of the five members, shift from jubilant to pensive to jovial, never once shrinking behind the orchestral flourishes. Unlike Days, where there the tracks were split between songs and compositions, In Search is almost entirely song-based, except for a couple transition or narration tracks.

And those songs are absolutely top notch, similar of the kind of beautiful psych pop that the Zombies or the Kinks or the prettier songs on The Who Sell Out. “Ride My See-Saw” merges from the druggy intro track with an urgent, rollicking rock tune filled with the best kind of thick harmonies this era had to offer. “Dr. Livingstone, I Presume” tempers its songcraft with a Beatlesy humor, offering a song that could be a companion to “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”

The B-side is filled with beautiful, meandering tunes. “Voices in the Sky” is delicate and understated. “The Best Way to Travel” celebrates the possibilities of human thought, the instrumentation shifting between each verse, complete with a noisy interlude between choruses halfway through the song. “Visions of Paradise” takes an Eastern turn, the voices accompanied primarily by a sitar and flute. Closer “Om” leans hard into Eastern spiritualism both musically and lyrically, shifting almost entirely into an Indian raga halfway through.

The most impressive moment on the album, though, is the three song suite that ends the first side.  “House of Four Doors (Part 1)” begins as a relatively straightforward sunshine pop song, before shifting a few shades darker. It then fades into the six and a half minute sonic pilgrimage of “Legend of a Mind,” which explores the teachings of spiritualist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary. A few minutes in, the loping pop tune takes a turn for the somber, and Richard Thomas takes leave of his vocal duties and embarks on a journey via flute solo, eventually arriving back on the chorus. That track then fades to “House of Four Doors (Part 2),” which returns to another round of the verse and chorus of the first part. It’s an excellent sequence which showcases the same sort of movement-based composition of Days of Future Passed without sacrificing the songwriting.

In all, In Search of the Lost Chord delivers exactly what I hoped it would: it is absolutely the transition from the more intricate, classical influence of their first LP and the more song-based psych pop of On the Threshold of a Dream. It’s well worth the listen, and worth far more than the four bucks I found it from. If you come across this one while crate-digging, do yourself a favor and pick it up.