As a longtime ELO fan, when I bought this album, I retitled it "Disco...(very)", which I've called it ever since. One fan site I was on the other day described it as "a mixture of dance tracks and ballads. Some of the songs here seem a continuation of their previous release "Out Of the Blue", such as the ballad "Midnight Blue". "Horace Wimp" reflects Jeff Lynne's well-known Beatle influence as a story of an ordinary man living his ho-hum life, right out of "Sergeant Pepper", or maybe "Abbey Road". Except the chorus seems lifted from Brian Hyland's oldie "The Joker Went Wild", note-for-note but uptempo. But have you ever noticed that when Lynne adds his R & B chops to Fab Four tonalities, it comes out more like the Bee Gees when they were first moving towards disco? Like the Gibb Brothers' telegraphed punch "Jive Talkin'"? The opener "Shine a Little Light" is the best example of that here. And the opening hooks to "Last Train To London" sounds like alternate backing tracks for the Heatwave classic "Boogie Nights". As the song wears on, it sounds like something Lynne might have tried unsuccessfully to get onto the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. Even in retrospect, I find it ironic that disco acts were always a bewildering mixture of a lot of technical skill but hardly any creativity. "Out Of the Blue" was enough of a nod to that empty genre as it was without this release going over the top. This one gets three stars from just one song: the single "Don't Bring Me Down", a track more consistent with "New World Record" or "Face the Music". Which is to say, this album's only rocker.
As a longtime ELO fan, when I bought this album, I retitled it "Disco... (very)", which I've called it ever since. One fan site I was on the other day described it as "a mixture of dance tracks and ballads. Some of the songs here seem a continuation of their previous release "Out Of the Blue", such as the ballad "Midnight Blue". "Horace Wimp" reflects Jeff Lynne's well-known Beatle influence as a story of an ordinary man living his ho-hum life, right out of "Sergeant Pepper", or maybe "Abbey Road". Except the chorus seems lifted from Brian Hyland's oldie "The Joker Went Wild", note-for-note but uptempo. But have you ever noticed that when Lynne adds his R & B chops to Fab Four tonalities, it comes out more like the Bee Gees when they were first moving towards disco? Like the Gibb Brothers' telegraphed punch "Jive Talkin'"? The opener "Shine a Little Light" is the best example of that here. And the opening hooks to "Last Train To London" sounds like alternate backing tracks for the Heatwave classic "Boogie Nights". As the song wears on, it sounds like something Lynne might have tried unsuccessfully to get onto the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. Even in retrospect, I find it ironic that disco acts were always a bewildering mixture of a lot of technical skill but hardly any creativity. "Out Of the Blue" was enough of a nod to that empty genre as it was without this release going over the top. This one gets three stars from just one song: the single "Don't Bring Me Down", a track more consistent with "New World Record" or "Face the Music". Which is to say, this album's only rocker.