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Old 11-02-2021, 07:56 PM   #2 (permalink)
Trollheart
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A New World Record (1976)

Though they had had a hit in the US with “Can’t Get it Out of My Head” from their 1974 album El Dorado, most people back home still did not know who ELO were at this point. This album was the one to change all of that. It broke them commercially, giving them no less than four hit singles, taking the album itself into the top ten in both the UK and the USA, and selling over five million units in its first year of release. After this, nobody - whether they liked them or not - would be able to say “EL Who?” The album marks a move away from the more ponderous, classically-based compositions of previous efforts like Face the Music and On the Third Day, and looks more to the accessible, pop sensibilities of songs from El Dorado while yet keeping the strings, choir and orchestra very much to the forefront.

There’s a very clever double entendre in the album title. It is, for them, a new world record - their first album to chart properly and their first (but by no means last) to break the States, as well as their first recording to hit such a height in sales - but also it is, as the title track notes, the record of a new world, as we’ll, um, explore, when we get to that track. It kicks off though on “Tightrope”, with spacey sounds, almost like the opening to El Dorado, but which get louder and can now be made out to be the approach of a spacecraft, then dark strings and orchestra get going in what has become almost typical ELO style before a choir comes in and then, just when you think this is some sort of overture there’s a staggered descent on keys into rock and roll guitar and things get going. Lynne’s lyric could be characterising the fortunes of the band to date - “They say somedays you gonna win/ They say somedays you gonna lose/ I tell you I got news for you/ You losing all the time you never win.” Not true of this album, my son.

The easy-on-the-ear, catchy nature of Lynne’s latest work here is evident; these are pop songs, intended for radio and, hopefully, for the charts, which is where many of them are headed. There’s a great sense of exuberance and joy in this song, and it’s hard to stay still while listening to it. Some use of echoed vocals here, which would become another trademark of ELO, lots of “Whoo!” sounds and then we’re into a reprise of, if you like, the overture to the song, forming a kind of middle eighth with the choir before it goes right back to the guitar. Great opener, and it leads into the first hit single, and one of my favourites of theirs. Starting off with the sound of a touch-tone telephone, then ringing, Richard Tandy’s solid keyboard pours all over the track as “Telephone Line” gets going on Lynne’s lonely, all but mono speaking voice with the opening lines “Hello, how are you? Have you been all right/ Through all the lonely lonely night?” Almost a message to the fans who have waited so long for a breakthrough album, perhaps?

If you’re any fan at all, you’ll know this song, even if, like Bob, you hate it, and Lynne’s melancholic electric piano carries the first lines of the verse before the orchestra comes in and the chorus is a masterclass in vocal harmonies. There’s even some doo-wop in there for good measure. The chorus future references one of their later hits when he sings “Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time/ I’m living in twilight. It’s not hard to envisage this being on the radio and climbing the charts, as indeed it was and it did, performing almost identically on both sides of the Atlantic, making it to number eight in the UK and one better in the USA. I must admit I’ve never been the biggest fan of “Rockaria!” but it delivers what it promises, an operatic aria opening the song before it kicks into a very Chuck Berry-like rock song as Lynne tries to convert an opera diva into a rock and roller. It’s a fun song I guess but it just has never done anything for me.

But who the hell cares about me? Another hit, it reached number nine in the UK, but seems to have passed over the heads of the Americans, who probably didn’t get it. Opera? You mean Star Wars? Great guitar work no doubt, and the orchestra really gets it on, the aria courtesy of Welsh soprano Mary Walsh, and in a sly nudge to the fans Lynne apparently left in the false start when she began singing before the music was ready. Quite endearing in a way; you can hear her go “oops!” The title track is up next, and here’s where the album title gets its double meaning. “Mission (A World Record)” is viewed from the standpoint of the crew of an alien ship who have come to monitor Earth - thus this being the record of a new world, to them - and opens with that spaceship sound again before it develops into what will be very familiar to anyone who’s heard “Ticket to the Moon” from the Time album, released 1981.

A simple piano line carries the tune until the chorus when it’s all hands on deck with some beautiful slide guitar and cello, the tone getting a little darker and almost Spanish in ways, or so it seems to me anyway. One thing I really love(d) about ELO was the fact that they knew not to overextend themselves, and here none of the songs run for over five minutes (well, the closer is five and a half) so you’re not listening to any epics and your attention rarely has time to wander. I wouldn’t say the title track is close to the best on the album, but it’s impressive, and when Lynne’s vocal gets ragged and emotional it’s very effective, almost lyrically a “Watcher of the Skies” in reverse. Sort of. First use on the album I think of the vocoder, which would become a regular weapon in ELO’s arsenal, and which they would help popularise in pop music.

“So Fine” has a sort of Beach Boys feel to it, very upbeat, very surf rock wedded to strings with a chunky guitar alongside sonorous cello and a simple idea in the lyric. Exceptionally catchy, more “woo-woo!” going on, a very simple chorus, perfect radio fare. No a hit single (not even a single) it features African tribal drumming in the midsection which is then joined by the orchestra, making it very sort of samba-flavoured, and it leads into another hit in “Livin’ Thing” which starts off with violin and trumpet and then gets going in another upbeat pop style, which gave them their highest chart placing at the time, reaching number four in the UK and hovering just outside the top ten in the States. More echoed vocal, and female backing vocals, another song that you kind of need to dance to.

A total contrast in the next two tracks: “Above the Clouds” features group vocals against rising strings in a sort of blues style. The song owes a lot to the Beatles, also the Beach Boys, with some very layered vocals, a short song, just over two minutes, and again foreshadowing a track on their next album with the lyric “You’d better believe me now. Just as you’re relaxing and closing your eyes to this though, sharp, nasty guitar kicks up upside the head and “Do Ya” is a hard, powerful, unapologetic re-working of one of the Move’s 1972 songs that just drags you all over the place with almost a sense of later Bryan Adams circa Reckless and some pretty spaced-out lyrics I must say. Lynne’s love of fifties and sixties rock and roll shines through on this song, something he would really never lose. The track however ends very similarly to how one of their biggest hits, “Mister Blue Sky” will do on the next album, a real orchestral ending.

You can catch your breath though, as the album ends on a slow luxuriant ballad, “Shangri-La” tidying up the room and ushering you quietly and gently out with some fine vocal harmonies again and a literal tribute to the Fab Four as Lynne sings “Faded like the Beatles on Hey Jude.” The orchestra comes into its own here, with some lovely work from the choir too, and as warned in the lyric, the song fades away, leaving you with a definite feeling of wanting more.

TRACK LISTING

Tightrope
Telephone Line
Rockaria!
Mission (A World Record)
So Fine
Livin’ Thing
Above the Clouds
Do Ya
Shangri-La

It’s hard in these times, when ELO have become a household name and their albums sell in the tens of millions of units, to understand that their rise to fame was so slow. It took five albums and four years before they finally made it. Once they did, of course, it wasn’t a one-hit breakthrough but an all-out assault on the charts. A New World Record would be followed by the massive Out of the Blue and finally a number one album in 1979’s Discovery. Hell, even when they teamed up with Olivia Newton-John they ended up getting two major hit singles, one of them hitting the top slot.

This was it. This was the big time. After a hard slog with carefully crafted but largely ignored albums, I suppose you could say ELO pandered to the masses and it paid off, but they kept their core principles of crossing pop and rock music with classical, and this remained their defining characteristic all through their career.

Rating: 8.8/10
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