ELO: Electric Light Orchestra (AKA No Answer) (1971)
Baroque pop is a phrase first coined in the 1960s to categorise the growing popularity of using orchestras in pop records. This trend may well have started with the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby, a fact I cannot verify but certainly, baroque pop grew in popularity throughout the 1960s and 1970s, from early classics like Keith West's “Excerpt From A Teenage Opera” and Chris Farlowe's “Out Of Time” through the delicately-layered music of Honeybus and the Beach Boys. The tradition continues strong to this day in the lush orchestrations of Goldfrapp's latest album and the delicate but sparse instrumentation which punctuates the music of Belle and Sebastian, or Teenage Fanclub.
But think about orchestras in pop, and the first name which will probably spring to mind is ELO, a band whose love of grandiose music arrangements was fully consummated on 1977's lush Out Of The Blue double album, a truly sublime listening experience which they never bettered, and which has fallen into popular folklore as the ultimate musical 'guilty pleasure'.
In the late 1960s, Roy Wood, the guitarist, singer and songwriter of The Move, had an idea to form a new band that would use cellos, violins, horns and woodwind to give their music a classical sound, taking rock music in a new direction and "picking up where The Beatles left off", citing as their starting points "Yesterday," "Strawberry Fields Forever," and "I Am The Walrus." Jeff Lynne, frontman with fellow Birmingham band The Idle Race, was excited by the concept, and in January 1970, when lead singer Carl Wayne left The Move, Lynne accepted Wood's second invitation to join the band - on the condition that they focus their energy on the new project. The duo (plus Move's bassist Rick Price and drummer Bev Bevan) immediately started developing the concept, and Lynne and Wood pooled their songwriting skills to produce some of The Move's most commercial fayre (Tonight, Chinatown, California Man) in order to finance ELO.
Where does “baroque pop” come into all this, then? The term is one which normally refers to something far more fragile and beautiful, and altogether less bombastic in its approach than what we have come to accept as classic ELO. Whereas the late 1970s saw ELO producing music which appealed to the middle-aged, their debut album would more likely appeal to aficionados of Middle Ages music.
Recorded between 1970 and 1971, largely as a four-piece, Electric Light Orchestra shows an enthusiastic and experimental band who are uncompromisingly true to their founding ideals. Make no bones about it - if you're expecting ELO's trademark afro-haired Brummie jollity, you won't find it anywhere on this album.
10538 Overture, the album's opening shot and perhaps its most obvious candidate for a commercial crossover opportunity, was ELO's first Top 10 hit, and one which, criminally, you never really hear very much of these days. The majestic opening guitar chords give way to some irresistible multitracked cello, which saws and grinds away in time to a constantly-descending chord sequence. Lynne's heavily-phased lead vocal recalls the story of an escaped prisoner, and Wood's impassioned cries in the chorus add extra emotional effect. The end result is a dramatic rollercoaster, with its doomy strings, hunting horns and increasingly-frenzied cello snippets recalling everything from nursery rhymes to Hendrix riffs. It all ends in total, unbridled chaos, much like the aforementioned Strawberry Fields Forever, and the end result is, to my ears, just delicious, if hardly uplifting.
Look At Me Now could at first be considered a poor cousin of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby, only with a more impassioned vocal. Granted, it borrows the string section lock, stock and barrel, but the Eastern-flavoured closing section is quite an original concept which quickly banishes any thoughts of plagiarised Fabness. Nellie Takes Her Bow is a much more familiarly-styled Jeff Lynne composition, not that dissimilar from his earliest tracks on “Looking On”. It's heavy on the piano flourishes, all minor sevenths and melancholy vocals, a Victorian music hall-styled melodrama with a frankly alarming middle section, where you half-expect the Sealed Knot society to burst in wearing full regalia. More of the same can be heard on the ludicrously overblown Battle Of Marston Moor, a high concept track which Bevan reputedly refused to play on because he considered it 'ridiculous'. It is, in fact, a superbly arranged piece of 17th century pastiche, especially when you consider that it's practically a Roy Wood solo track, and Wood is almost certainly playing all the parts himself. Marston Moor isn't one of his best tracks, but it's an interesting cut nonetheless. It probably wouldn't sound out of place as the soundtrack to a period drama, in fact if you close your eyes you can almost smell the gunpowder. See My Baby Jive, it ain't.
Speaking of which, it's at just this point in the album that the mood desperately needs a lift, and respite arrives right on cue in the form of Wood's catchy 1st Movement (Jumping Biz), which borrows heavily from Mason Williams' 1968 magnum opus Classical Gas yet somehow still manages to sound quite original. The double-tracked acoustic guitars are beautifully played, and demonstrate just what an underrated guitarist Wood was.
Mr. Radio, track six, is another theatrical tour-de-force courtesy of Jeff Lynne, which recalls an uncanny lyrical talent Lynne showed in The Idle Race for inventing a host of slightly oddball characters to narrate his songs, rather than singing them in the first person. Here, the singer is a desperate, lonely individual clinging onto his radio for company after his wife has left him. The pianos are quite ghostly and the lyrics almost tearjerking. The string-laden coda sounds like the soundtrack to an old-black and white film, leaving you feeling quite – ahem – moved. The next offering, the instrumental 49th Street Massacre, conjures up mind pictures of Depression-era America. It starts with a pounding and menacing beat which will have you looking over your shoulder for a crazed axeman, and features a playful ragtime middle section which offsets the wonderfully atmospheric mood of the main melody.
The final two songs sound suspiciously more like conventional Wood/Lynne compositions, and finish the album on rather a lighter note, which is not unwelcome after all that earlier stürm und drang. Perhaps these were unused Move songs, I don't know; but either way they tread an altogether more familiar musical path. Queen Of The Hours wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Move album, but there is nothing particularly outstanding about the string section, and the parts could just have easily been played by an electric band. The album's swansong Whisper In The Night sounds like an offcut from Wood's first solo album, Boulders, from which I would imagine this track's roots lie. It's another tender love song, in much the same vein as 'Dear Elaine', of which the varispeed 'choir' at 2.24 ("Angels sing!") is a particular joy.
As I wrote earlier, this album is absolutely nothing like the ELO that you hear on the radio. In fact, to all intents and purposes, it may as well be a different band.
What kind of a world would this be without “Mr. Blue Sky” to cheer up our darkest days? I can't bear to think – but without this album, it would certainly never have happened. Listen with an open mind, and prepare to be quite amazed.
