Log #201 - Turn Back The Music

Starting off my next century with a right pot pourri of sounds here. We have watery ambience class from Loscil. Sea Island was the first album of his I heard. It hooked me to a greater extent than a lot of the other ambient albums I've been listening to over the last 20 weeks or so.

 Loscil - Sea Island

Ulrich Schnauss - A Long Way To Fall

The Decemberists - Picaresque

Nick Cave - The Lyre Of Orpheus

Midlake - The Trials Of Van Occupanther
ELO - Face The Music

I'm loving this Ulrich Schnauss offering. It is simply superb at what it does... which is melodic easy listening instrumental rock. I'd describe it as a bit of a mix between Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, and then even Pink Floyd or something. Maybe progressive ambience is a better description although this music isn't that ambient with its guitars and drums. The closest other artist out there (who I've only just started listening to) is probably Tycho. I think Schnauss seems to offer more content and depth though from what I've heard. The production is superb. A Long Way To Fall would sound great in the car at high speed and high volume.

I'm in two minds about Picaresque from The Decemberists. The band are no doubt supremely talented with an exceptional ear for a melody, and biting lyrics. I can't quite decide if I like lead singer Colin Meloy's folk rock articulations. It's certainly very characterful but sometimes a little overwhelming possibly at the detriment of the superb songs. A minor gripe maybe in the face of a brilliant maritime folk tale like The Mariner's Revenge Song. 

Midlake are superb. Especially the albums from their Tim Smith (the original singer) vintage years. I think they only did 3 albums with Smith. I have two of them to date, and Occupanther is the middle one. In this crowded and often middle of the road Americana genre they stand out as something special. A lot is to do with Smith's desperately sad voice, which is why I haven't warmed to them so much since he left.

Another great album from Nick Cave. This one, like its sister album Abattoir Blues, is packed full of straight ahead rock and tuneful pop - quite uncharacteristic of the Cave I know from albums like The Boatman's Call, and certainly his last few dour offerings which I played about once each before moving on.

Finally this week a dip into the distant past when, as a teenager, I collected ELO records. Face The Music was one of the second string (and earlier) albums if you like (this one from 1975). The band were finding their feet and hadn't reached the heights yet of A New World Record and Out Of The Blue. Still a good record though with some experimental instrumentals and one or two cracking singles like Strange Magic and Evil Woman. 

The music is reversible but time is not. Turn back, turn back, turn back, turn back.

I do wonder where ELO fitted in to the music landscape at the time though. Just after the heyday of prog, just before disco and punk - what did the music listening public make of their symphonic pop? Was there another band then or now that was attempting something similar? Many compared their best work to The Beatles (Strawberry Fields etc possibly) and Jeff Lynne was certainly a talented and consistent songwriter but as a schoolboy I just thought it was cool to have a band with cellos and violins and even their own conductor!?

Face The Music was the first ELO album with the classic line up of Gale, Bevan, Groucutt, Lynne, Tandy, Kaminski and McDowell. 

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Jeff Lynne Achieves Pop Perfection - ELO's Out Of The Blue

Still rather wrong-headedly regarded as a ‘guilty pleasure’ Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra were quite simply a gigantic pop hit machine. Oft-derided as a mere Beatles copyist, Lynne’s genius was to take his earliest ambition of recreating the rush felt when first hearing I Am The Walrus and achieve it, again and again.

The formula was simple (and in this he was far from being alone in the early 70s) – to weld pure rock melody with classical stringed grandeur. When the idiosyncratic fellow ex-Move member Roy Wood jumped ship, Lynne began his rise to chart domination. Over the space of five years and six albums Jeff refined the sound in his head.

By 1976’s New World Record (their finest moment) he’d achieved world status and was now the master technician of the four-minute chamber pop format. By 1977 he had only one way to go – bigger and grander. But, as his sleevenotes recall, holed-up in the Swiss Alps he found inspiration slow in coming.

Finally the muse returned, in spades. So much in fact that Out Of The Blue became a double album. Increased budgets fitting the band’s status meant that the sound was now as big as it could get (for the time). Multi-layered EVERYTHING pours out of the speakers, almost drowning you in lushness. Considering how good it sounds buffed-up for digital consumption, it’s amazing that these tracks sounded so amazing on tinny old AM radio. The album yielded four enormous hits.

Of these, Sweet Talkin’ Woman remains Lynne’s most perfect hit. From its George Martin-homage string intro to the massed acoustic guitars, it’s a rollercoaster of sweetness. These days, of course, everyone hails Mr Blue Sky as his magnum opus, yet its wild construction shows the first sign that Jeff was trying a little too hard.

The rest of the album remains a solid, if somewhat bloated romp through concept-lite AOR. Dotted with bubbling ‘modernity’ in the shape of Richard Tandy’s synths (The Whale) and childhood reverie (Birmingham Blues, Wild West Hero), all wrapped in a suitably sci fi sleeve. ELO would never repeat its successes, and to this day Out Of The Blue remains an essential purchase for anyone wishing to bask in their pop perfection.

Creatively and commonly shared by Chris Jones from http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/5qbd/ (my scoring)

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ELO - Their 3rd

I was a bit disappointed with this album. I bought it in a fit of nostalgia (ELO being my favourite band in my teenage years) having not heard it for many years. The music sounds dated and is not helped by the mix that to my ears sounds like the drums are a bit muddy and too prominent on many tracks.

Therefore some of the tunes, especially the novelty items like In the Hall of the Mountain King, sound bombastic. The anthemic Dreaming of 4000 is an exciting track and I enjoyed the Dylanesque Everyone's Born to Die (one of the bonus tracks) but really only the sublime Showdown (available elsewhere on some of the excellent Harvest Year compilations) hints at future magnificence. If you want to explore some early period ELO I would go for Eldorado instead.

      

Tragic footnote: Mike Edwards, cellist, the shortest figure on Jeff Lynne's immediate left, suffered the most bizarre and unfortunate rock star death when a runaway hay bale crushed his car on a country road in Devon in September 2010 >>  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-11195393

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Log #46 - No Change From Me

1. ELO - Out of the Blue
2. JJ Cale - Naturally
3. The Doobie Brothers - The Captain and Me
4. Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space
5. Takemitsu - Quatrain, A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden
6. Foals - Total Life Forever

It's the holiday season and my musical listening has transferred temporarily from the 6-Cd magazine to my ipod and all that that entails - ie. random plays and playlists. This isn't a state of affairs to be encouraged as I do believe a good album is a tangible entity in itself and is greater than the sum of its parts. See my essay on this phenomenon here>>.

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Log #45 - Naturally

1. ELO - Out of the Blue
2. JJ Cale - Naturally
3. The Doobie Brothers - The Captain and Me
4. Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space
5. Takemitsu - Quatrain, A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden
6. Foals - Total Life Forever

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Log #44 - Nu rock, Old Rock, and other Nostalgia

A bit of a sweep out of the magazine this week and what an eclectic bunch of pot pourri I've found lurking on the shelves: Plenty of nostalgia in more ways than one, some new rock, or nu rock, or post rock (I don't know what any of that means but I'm referring to The Foals), and some "modern" classical.

1. ELO - Out of the Blue
2. Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
3. UFO - Phenomenon
4. Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space
5. Takemitsu - Quatrain, A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden
6. Foals - Total Life Forever

First up ELO. They were my favourite band, and this was my favourite album when I was about 14 or 15 (when I first got into music). I remember buying my first real record. It was an EP of 4 tracks from ELO. I really wanted Out of the Blue but thought buying this EP would be ample consolation and I honestly wouldn't need any more records (reminds me of the story that my sister went to her first day at school thinking that was it, for her whole school career, one day!). A few years later after probably at least 50 album purchases my mother said "I think you've got enough records now" as if music collecting is a finite thing! Here I am 30+ years later with probably a four figure album collection.

The EP was excellent - from memory it contained Can't Get It Out of My Head, Ma Ma Belle, and a couple of other older tracks but... Out of the Blue was something else. Everyone loved it, it swept the awards season, spawned numerous hit singles, and came on blue vinyl in a luxurious gatefold sleeve and a cardboard spaceship apparently (I don't remember getting one of them).

I loved the blue vinyl. It looked so slick and clean compared to the black. I loved the cover which I pored over (I noticed there were 7 tiny figures on the inside sleeve corresponding to the band members. The music was amazing - great songs (apart from The Jungle which still annoys) peaking with Mr Blue Sky which remained my favourite song for ages. I loved the reprise part which my Dad told me had been done before by the Beatles. I didn't know what he meant until I heard Day In The Life (the "got up, dragged a comb across my head" section). I was proud to be an ELO fan and thought it especially cool that they had violins and cellos (I expect this was something to do with trying to impress my parents with "proper" musicians). I did a project on them for school which concluded with the unavoidable view that with their follow up albums of Discovery and Xanadu they had almost certainly declined from their 1977 magnificence. I did really try to like Discovery for a long time but it was a bit rubbish to be honest and tracks like The Diary of Horace Wimp just tried far too hard.

Jeff Lynne today - it could be 1977

Leader Jeff Lynne is still going strong still looking and sounding the same (witness his Glastonbury set last year). Why do so few of these long haired pop stars lose their hair in their later years?

ELO - Out of the Blue - Inside gatefold

Lie la lie, lie la lie lie lie la la lie!  (The Boxer) There are so many familiar tunes and lyrics on these amazing songs from the classic Bridge Over Troubled Water album. Many people have the Greatest Hits album which contains practically all these tunes plus some more but I always prefer to hear complete albums in their original context.

I remember these songs from my childhood as it was one of the few albums my parents had, and they played it a lot. When there wasn't such a choice in those days (60s, early 70s) it stands to reason that many households would have the same records. I also think the gatekeepers of quality were more discerning and only the best stuff got through (less so now when anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can get an album out).

Playing the album again it strikes me how melancholy a lot of the music is despite the number of upbeat songs like Cecilia, and the very Beatles / Beach Boys-esque Bye Bye Love etc. Bridge Over Troubled Water and The Boxer are pretty depressing. My favourite then and now is The Only Living Boy in New York.

I haven't followed Garfunkel or Simon in their solo careers. Art had the voice, and Paul had the songs, and together, like all good groups, they were greater than the sum of the parts. I saw Paul Simon on Jools Holland recently and he still sounded excellent and Art is still touring too. I can only imagine the fees they could command for a reunion.

Cover album this week is Phenomenon from UFO. A great little spunky rock band and this album has all you need to hear really. There's the famous Doctor Doctor Pleeeaaase! and Rock Bottom but the class is in the slower tempo blues tracks like Oh My, Too Young to Know etc. Also the cover is a classic. Look closely and you can see the UFO is the hub cap from the car - a picture I recreated rather well with a saucepan lid once! I understand guitar god Michael Schenker (where is he now?) was 17 when he recorded this album with UFO. Wow.

Michael Schenker - here he is, still going

Public Service Broadcasting set samples of literally old public information films to music. It's been done before but rarely as well as this. For the full experience see some of their Youtube videos. I saw them live at a festival and they didn't have the video backdrop which was disappointing. But they were still great fun and don't take themselves too seriously. Favourite track from this album is the exciting Go!

The very geeky, the very eccentric Willgoose and Wigglesworth aka PSB

I love this Takemitsu album. It's modern minimalist discordant classical music and makes for very interesting background ambient sound. I reference this to an aquarium I bought many years ago which coincided with having this album. I remember watching the orange platies against a lush green plant background with this otherworldly music accompaniment.

The Foals are one of the classiest of modern rock bands offering to my ear something a bit different (I'd stick them at the top of that modern prog rock league which contains contemporaries Coldplay, Elbow, and Muse). They have a great singer and an interesting melodic rhythm and vibes section. Key track on this album is Spanish Sahara.

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