Jeff Lynne’s ELO – Alone In The Universe
15 years after his last album that took 15 years to arrive, Jeff Lynne is back, once again operating under the ELO banner, with an album that straddles his own tendencies toward classic rock and the trademark sound that his fans all but demand anytime he surfaces.
It’s not as if he’s been completely dormant during this time: an album of re-recorded-all-by-himself ELO covers, some of them fairly close to the sound of the originals, as well as an album of rock covers of classic hits and standards, done in Lynne’s trademark style. Armchair Theatre, his 1990 solo album, was reissued with bonus tracks. He’s also been producing albums for the likes of Joe Walsh and Bryan Adams, so it’s not as if he and his sound have gone completely underground.
But what has been missing is Jeff Lynne, writing new songs and performing and producing them himself. Long Wave and Mr. Blue Sky, nice as they were, were covers albums. Alone In The Universe is what Lynne/ELO fans have really been waiting for: new music from that familiar, laid-back voice. “When I Was A Boy” opens the album with languid nostalgia, perhaps as autobiographical a song as we’re ever likely to hear from Lynne, chronicling his childhood love of music that led to a life of writing and performing. There are hints of strings, all synthesized/sampled, though they’re kept far enough in the background that it doesn’t break the song.
“Love And Rain” picks up the tempo with a guitar groove reminiscent of “Showdown”‘s clavinet, while “Dirty To The Bone” bestows a cheerful sound upon some surprisingly biting (and occasionally silly) lyrics. What follows next is a one-two punch of two of the album’s best numbers, the mesmerizing “When The Night Comes” and the strangely relaxing and uplifting “The Sun Will Shine”. “When The Night Comes” takes some tried-and-true elements, such as a chorus that owes more than a little bit to the chorus of the Traveling Wilburys’ “Not Alone Any More”, and sets them to a beat that’s as close to reggae as Lynne’s ever likely to stray. “The Sun Will Shine” is a gently uplifting song with some of Lynne’s best lyrics in ages, with a soothing synth-and-guitar wash in the background. (In the electronic press kit interview for the album, Lynne says he wrote it to help a friend who was depressed; I can tell you that it does work in cheering up someone in dire straits.) “Ain’t It A Drag” is a delightfully cheery song about karma catching up with someone who’s done you wrong, while “All My Life” is a more plaintive, idealized love song, but a very pretty one.
“I’m Leaving You” sees Lynne going for the full Orbison, which is a gutsy thing to do because, as Bruce Springsteen himself once said, no one can sing like Roy Orbison. Still, this is a better approximation than most could manage. “One Step At A Time”, added at a late stage out of concern that the album didn’t have enough upbeat tracks, is a curious mix of a driving rhythm that wouldn’t have been out of place on Discovery, slathered with languid slide guitar that is simultaneously at odds with that rhythm and yet fits over it nicely. (And, for the first time in many years, it’s an ELO song with more cowbell!)
“Alone In The Universe” brings the album to a close in its intended configuration, Lynne’s ode to – of all things – space probe Voyager 1, outbound from the edge of the solar system, and it turns out to be the most ELO-ish song of the entire album, in both subject matter and presentation. Where Zoom might’ve left some fans thinking that it was an ELO album in name only, this album’s title track demonstrates that ELO is back in more than name only, even if it’s just Jeff Lynne in his studio. The sound of ELO is back as well.
Various deluxe versions of the album somewhat jarringly add anywhere from two to three extra songs after that perfect closure, from the country-rock of “Fault Line” (probably inspired by Lynne’s proximity to San Andreas), “Blue” (an addictively Wilbury-ish number), and the very ’80s-ish “On My Mind” (whose production touches include helicopters flying overhead for some reason).
Assembled as a musical package, Alone In The Universe is almost everything I’ve missed about ELO, tied up with a bow – this is why I still get excited to hear about Jeff Lynne heading into a studio, and why I hope he doesn’t keep taking off 15 years between albums.
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- When I Was A Boy (3:12)
- Love And Rain (3:30)
- Dirty To The Bone (3:06)
- When The Night Comes (3:22)
- The Sun Will Shine On You (3:30)
- Ain’t It A Drag (2:36)
- All My Life (2:51)
- I’m Leaving You (3:08)
- One Step At A Time (3:21)
- Alone In The Universe (3:55)
Bonus Tracks
- Fault Line (2:07)
- Blue (2:36)
- On My Mind (3:09)
Released by: Columbia
Release date: November 13, 2015
Total running time: 32:23 (standard edition/LP), 37:06 (deluxe CD/download), 40:23 (Japanese Blu-Spec CD)
Released in tandem with the 30th anniversary edition of Out Of The Blue is, oddly, the last album released by anything resembling ELO’s original lineup as a band. In the years after Secret Messages, bassist Kelly Groucutt vanished from the lineup, leaving a three-piece outfit of Bev Bevan, Richard Tandy and Jeff Lynne, looking in this album’s photography like three guys angling for a chance to be extras in the background of a Miami Vice scene. With Lynne tired of touring, and Bevan tiring of Lynne’s increasingly elaborate studio sessions, this was the end of the road for ELO as a group. There’s a certain weariness to the songs that, while it doesn’t prevent them from being decent music, lets one read between the lines a bit. It was all over.
Out Of The Blue is, quite simply, one of the most iconic albums of the ’70s, hands-down. It seems that, despite its intricate arrangements and impeccable musicianship, this album will simply never have the rock critic cachet of, say, Dark Side Of The Moon. And yet these days, one hears more young artists coming out of the woodwork trying to achieve the sound of Jeff Lynne and company than one hears Pink Floyd sound-alikes. You can do the math there if you like.
One of the three most recently remastered ELO albums, Face The Music is long overdue for a fresh listen, being – arguably – the first album of the band’s golden years. It’s also the album with “Evil Woman” and “Face The Music” on it, which certainly doesn’t hurt. (Sadly, during the remastering process, nobody remembered to kick “Down Home Town” out of the original track listing.)
With any slate of back catalogue reissues, you’re already running the risk of the consumer saying “been there, done that.” But it takes talent to achieve the same effect when it comes to the added-value bonus material. Maybe that’s a little unfair; as with the other ELO remasters to date, 1973’s On The Third Day has never sounded better. The apocalyptic-sounding fusion of strings and the closest ELO ever came to heavy metal positively sparkles, and the liner notes finally give a little bit of insight into the making of the album; with its bizarre, quasi-Biblical themes, Third Day has never ceased to fascinate me. It’s territory ELO hadn’t ventured into before, and never ventured into again.
It’s not a total disappointment, since not everyone will have gotten that UK import (and since those bonus tracks didn’t show up on the North American version of the ELO II remaster), but aside from some nice liner notes and a sharper sound, hardcore ELO fans won’t find much new here that they haven’t heard already.
Originally devised as a band that would “pick up where the ‘Beatles’ I Am The Walrus’ left off,” the Electric Light Orchestra was well on its way to carving out its own admittedly unconventional niche when the band’s leadership was split down the middle. Stunned by the sudden defection of founding member Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and company regrouped, brought in a few more players, and kept the band’s original mandate – a rock group with its own live string section – intact. The result, in 1972, was two vinyl sides of beauty running the gamut from heavy metal to near-classical rock to ballads. Now, some 31 years later, the result is two full-length CDs of that same beauty and then some.
The premise of this double-disc compilation is simple: various modern pop artists, most of them enjoying cult indie label status (and a few of them refugees from major labels too), revisit the songs of one of their musical heroes, ELO’s Jeff Lynne. Colorado’s own Not Lame Records has been teasing the heck out of this release for months, only to watch it be bogged down by politics (the father/son duo of Randy and Tal Bachman, each of whom were originally slated to contribute a song, pulled out) and delays (a printing error in the first run of liner notes booklets which caused the collection to slip well past its original pre-Christmas 2001 release date). And now that it’s here, was it worth the lengthy wait?
In the late 60s, one would’ve been hard-pressed to find a post-Beatles psychedelic power pop outfit more prominent in Britain than The Move. (How prominent? One of their singles was the first song played on BBC Radio 1.) So naturally, the members of the Move would’ve been crazy to knock a sure thing in the head and try something as drastically different as a live rock group with its own string section.
Now discontinued by Eagle Records, a small label which has unleashed a small slew of ELO live albums in recent years, this two-disc set is a compilation of live cuts as originally broadcast on BBC Radio’s In Concert series.
And to think, you thought ELO’s story was over. A series of rare tracks, live cuts, concerts and rarities have kept the band alive for fans during the 90s – not to mention a little band called ELO Part Two, who have been paying Jeff Lynne’s mortgage from publishing royalties alone for the past decade. But with the abrupt end of ELO Part Two, now operating under the somewhat generic name Orchestra, we should’ve known something was up. Jeff Lynne’s been a busy boy, supervising the restoration and remastering of the original ELO session tapes and finishing incomplete recordings which originated anywhere from 1980 to ’82. Alternate mixes of “Do Ya”, “Mission (A World Record)” and “Mama” are included here, along with a murky 1973 home demo and a completely new version of “Xanadu”, performed by Lynne in a style which seems to owe more to the Traveling Wilburys than to ELO.