Trollheart's
Album title: El Dorado
Artist: Electric Light Orchestra
Nationality: British
Year: 1974
Chronology: 4
The Trollheart Factor: 10
Track Listing: El Dorado Overture/Can’t Get it Out of My Head/Boy Blue/Laredo Tornado/Poor Boy (The Greenwood)/Mister Kingdom/Nobody’s Child/Illusions in G Major/El Dorado/El Dorado Finale
Comments: Ah, I could review this album without playing it. I know it so well. ELO were the first ever band of any sort I got into, their albums were the first in my collection, the very first being
Discovery, which I played on an ancient record player which was operated on a valve system, and heated up after one album so you had to shut it off to allow it to cool down before playing another. Got it for twenty-five pence at a garden fete in the 1970s. Ah, great days! This came in a triple boxset which I was presented with for my birthday, and delighted too (of course I had hinted very strongly at what I wanted) but of that set this was the one that caught my attention and interest, and even now it’s one of my all-time favourite ELO albums.
Their first concept album, it concerns the daydreams of a bank clerk who is bored with his life, and imagines himself in faraway places performing heroic deeds. Well, who hasn’t done that? In apparently a direct acceptance of a challenge from his father, a classical buff, Jeff Lynne wrote the whole thing and it still stands as one of their most cohesive and impressive albums, even earning them an unlikely hit single. It opens on a dreamy, ethereal introduction, a deep, dark voice intoning the opening monologue, then a big orchestral overture slams in, rising to a crescendo before falling gently away and leading us into that hit single, the ballad “Can’t Get It Out of My Head”.
It’s a lovely song, but I have to admit I’ve never rated Lynne as a singer; here he just sounds a little, I don’t know, drunk maybe? Still a great song, and it introduces something ELO would use in years to come, a choir and indeed an actual orchestra. A fanfare then introduces “Boy Blue”, which is a hard rocker where the guitars really get to let loose, and into the much slower, melancholy “Laredo Tornado”, which features nice pipes and a sort of staggered
acapella vocal. "Poor Boy (The Greenwood)” then picks up the pace again, rocketing along with a reprise of the overture right at the end.
A very
pizzicato strings opening then to “Mister Kingdom”, where Lynne begins with a soft, tender vocal that rises as the music gets more intense, the whole thing ending on a big orchestral blast which gets louder and more intense until it all falls back for another ballad, again quite orchestral and strings-driven with sort of chanted vocals on the chorus. I’ve never been a huge fan of “Nobody’s Child”, but it’s not the worst. Definitely the weak track on the album, for me, though, which stops it being perfect. Rock and roll guitars take “Illusions in G Major” as Lynne just basically rocks out and has fun, particularly with the lyrical matter, before we reach the title track, a heartfelt, empathic, stirring ballad with more than a hint of old Hollywood about it. And we close on the "El Dorado Finale", which reprises the overture, pumping it up to ten and just really going for it right to the end, when the voiceover returns, then fading away in a sparkle of scintillating sound like tiny marbles dropped on the floor.
Track(s) I liked: Everything other than “Nobody’s Child” and “Illusions in G Major”
Track(s) I didn't like: Nobody’s Child/Illusions in G Major
One standout: No; impossible to pick one that stands so high above the rest. Many could qualify, but I couldn’t pick just one.
One rotten apple: No way.
Overall impression: Always one of my favourite ELO albums, beside
Out of the Blue, Time and maybe
Discovery, I find almost no weak tracks on this, and it hangs together so well. Given the previous albums’ pretty sketchy construction, this is almost ELO coming into their own, and the ones to follow this would only show how they were going to grow and grow as time went on. Sadly, they kind of faded away rather than leave a powerful swan song, then Lynne resurrected the band, but it’s not the same. This was from their heyday, though, and it will always be one of my top albums.
Rating: 9.9/10
Future Plan: n/a