This album evoked memories from two different periods of my life. The first was childhood, because I remember this album being present at my cousin’s house, and some envy over the cut-out model of the ELO spacecraft that came with it. Such an artifact would have been lost or damaged pretty quickly in our house, but my aunt and uncle had a meticulously maintained set of shelves replete with Seventies curios – a 3D noughts and-crosses set using marbles, a magnetic “sculpture” toy, a Newton’s Cradle, a fibre-optic lamp that changed colours. Such futuristic stuff!
And I think I remember most of the tracks from that time – certainly they were all familiar, not just the five singles that were released. My cousin, being older, always had the new and exciting music – Bowie, Queen, Blondie, Ian Dury, Sex Pistols etc.
But I also remember this from college days, and a group of us creating an impromptu version of the track Jungle using various kitchen implements for the percussion; I’m not sure if I had a copy of this album at that time, or simply a "greatest hits" compilation which again would feature a hefty chunk of the tracks on this album.
It’s a double album, the one that features Mr Blue Sky as part of a suite of tracks loosely based around stormy weather taken both literally and as a metaphor for relationships – Standin’ In The Rain and Summer And Lightning for example – that Jeff Lynne composed while waiting for it to stop raining during his Swiss retreat.
The ELO sound is pretty distinctive; lots of overdubbed vocals that do both harmonies and call and response. It’s almost disco with its use of strings – I’d say Sweet Talkin’ Woman was pretty disco. I know Chic are coming up, I’d need to check if “disco” was actually a thing by 1977 [Edit: I forgot to do this, but, yes, it was]. Fundamentally it’s just funk with strings rather than horns, I’d say. But mostly the tracks reminded me of the Bee Gees (who also go disco around this time), with a lot of melodies and do-wop stylings that I could see being performed either by somebody like The Temptations or by a Noughties boy band. Especially Sweet Is The Night or Summer And Lightning.
Although this is a double album, I didn’t experience Side Three Slump. That might be a side effect of having to listen to it in three chunks, however. And, Side Three is the Blue Sky suite so I guess that’s fitting. There’s maybe a bit of filler – the track Jungle that we played with is sort of silly, The Whale is an instrumental based around whale songs, and Birmingham Blues is a little like a Status Quo blues-rock track that doesn’t quite fit.
This is very much a producer’s album. Jeff Lynne isn’t at Todd Rundgren levels of doing absolutely everything himself, but he does do a lot (presumably nearly all of the voices are him, although Kelly Groucutt also has a vocal credit). And it sounds very “produced” as well, a mix of crispness and wall-of-sound. Compared to the raw unfiltered sound of the previous Sex Pistols album it feels quite artificial (although given there was overdub of Sid Vicious’ bass on that album it was still fiddled with in post), but in a way that’s the joy of having such disparate albums back to back.
This one, and Never Mind The Bollocks are both classed as forms of “rock”. From the starting point of Elvis back in 1955, the music has diverged along evolutionary lines that you could trace back to that album, #3 in this series, via steps that are clearly related, but now you’ve got performers like ELO and The Sex Pistols who feel poles apart. Brilliant!
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