sorry, i snoozed on this one yesterday... what are ya gonna do.
This past year I got turned onto Electric Light Orchestra because of a Greatest Hits CD in the jukebox at work (The Essential Electric Light Orchestra to be specific.) What I didn't realize was how many amazing songs this band had written that I already knew but had no idea it was ELO. The best way to describe ELO is if the Beatles decided to stay together, keep making records, get an orchestra and focus largely on being from the future. On a recent van trip, my friend Matt and I decided that we kinda like ELO even a little more than the Beatles.
I've been doing my best to dig in on some albums by this band after listening to that "essentials" collection on repeat for four months straight, and the plus side to this is that a lot of people don't give too much of a shit about ELO so it's easy to find their records pretty cheap at thrift stores and record shops. This is the second ELO album I bought (only four bucks!) and apparently this is the record when they went from being an okay cheesy rock band to their expansive sound that they stuck with for years. By "expansive" I mean they added an orchestra and started making arrangements that are completely fucking ridiculous.
This album starts off with "Eldorado Overture", a cinematic classical piece made for a rock band with a full orchestra. The themes of this song come up throughout the record with the Bach-esque introduction to "Boy Blue" up until "Eldorado Finale" which transcends the melodies into an elaborate fanfare bringing everything back around. The songs in between follow the concept of someone who escapes into a fantasy dream world because reality is boring. Apparently.
This far out story line and baroque leanings doesn't stop Electric Light Orchestra from being extremely accessible on their first record with a full-realized lineup (including a fucking choir! yeah?) as slow jams like "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" and rockers like "Boy Blue" will remain with you for days, and the funky "Laredo Tornado" follows them up nicely. The record loses some steam at the beginning of side two, but the title track closes out the record quite strongly as it is one of the best tracks.
The amount of styles represented by Electric Light Orchestra on this record is mountainous and Electric Light Orchestra flows in and out of them so effortlessly it is a wonder why they aren't more recognized as one of the most important and best bands of all time. I guess in part it might be because nobody has ever really attempted to match the complicated arrangements on this record except ELO on future records (and maybe Queen.) It might also be because ELO's later records failed to capture the same ingenuity as this era, perhaps due to a number of line-up changes, loss of strings in lieu of synthesizers or the ugly ELO Part II that didn't even have main songwriter Jeff Lynne. Fuck it, though. Don't care. They thankfully left enough great records to keep me busy hunting at thrift stores for a while.
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