Electric Light Orchestra continued on their winning Top 40 ways with the release of Discovery. Now pared down to the basic four-piece unit, Jeff Lynne continued to dominate the band and they still got their hits (this time around it was the smash "Don't Bring Me Down"). Elsewhere on the disc there was, of note, "Last Train to London" and ...
Most of ELO's biggest and best hits -- "Evil Woman," "Rockaria," "Telephone Line" -- are included on this solid but slightly skimpy collection. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Epic/Legacy's 2005 release All Over the World: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra is the latest installment in the seemingly endless series of ELO comps. Since it follows 2003's handy single-disc The Essential Electric Light Orchestra by merely two years, it's easy to wonder what distinguishes this from the other ELO collections on the ...
There have been many ELO collections over the years -- some exhaustive, some not -- so it might initially seem that the 2003 collection The Essential Electric Light Orchestra is a little unnecessary, especially since the definitive 1995 double-disc set Strange Magic was still in print at the time of this release. This line of reasoning ...
The very fact that Electric Light Orchestra released a second three-disc box set is a tacit admission that, yes, 1987's Afterglow wasn't everything it should be. Happily, 2000's Flashback is. Assembled with the cooperation of Jeff Lynne, Flashback covers all the bases, featuring all the hits, a good selection of album tracks, and seven previously ...
Jeff Lynne reportedly regards this album and its follow-up, Out of the Blue, as the high points in the band's history. One might be better off opting for A New World Record over its successor, however, as a more modest-sized creation chock full of superb songs that are produced even better. Opening with the opulently orchestrated "Tightrope," ...
Time takes its cues more from such bands as the Alan Parsons Project and Wings than from Jeff Lynne's fascination with Pepper-era Beatles. Sure, all the electronic whirrs and bleeps are present and accounted for, and Time did spawn hit singles in "Hold on Tight" and "Twilight," but on the average, ELO had begun to get too stuck on the same ...
Face the Music was sort of ELO's return to a more basic sound after the ornate (and highly commercially successful) experimentation of Eldorado, and that's what's on display on this remastered edition as well -- everything is in high relief and all of the sound richly detailed, but it's the core band sound that stands out most, amid the rich, ...
Since there was a Pure Funk and Pure Disco, it makes sense that a Pure '70s would follow. It couldn't be called "Pure Rock," since a lot of this simply doesn't rock at all -- "American Pie," anyone? However, all 20 songs on this collection (mostly culled from the Polygram vaults) reek of the '70s, and that's why this is a fun listen. Yes, it's ...
This is the album where Jeff Lynne finally found the sound he'd wanted since co-founding Electric Light Orchestra three years earlier. Up to this point, most of the group's music had been self-contained -- Lynne, Richard Tandy, et al., providing whatever was needed, vocally or instrumentally, even if it meant overdubbing their work layer upon ...
The last ELO album to make a major impact on popular music, Out of the Blue was of a piece with its lavishly produced predecessor, A New World Record, but it's a much more mixed bag as an album. For starters, it was a double LP, a format that has proved daunting to all but a handful of rock artists, and was no less so here. The songs were flowing ...
Electric Light Orchestra's more modest follow-up to Eldorado is a very solid album, if not as bold or unified. It was also their first recorded at Musicland in Munich, which became Jeff Lynne's preferred venue for cutting records. At the time, he was also generating songs at a breakneck pace and had perfected the majestic, quasi-Beatles-type style ...
Electric Light Orchestra's third album showed a marked advancement, with a fuller, more cohesive sound from the band as a whole and major improvements in Jeff Lynne's singing and songwriting. This is where the band took on its familiar sound, Lynne's voice suddenly showing an attractive expressiveness reminiscent of John Lennon in his early solo ...
After mining the Beatles gold mine for all those catchy hooks, by the time that Balance of Power was released, Jeff Lynne and company had pretty much found that once-rich vein going dry. This album did contain yet another Top 40 hit with "Calling America," but by the mid-'80s, ELO were finding their audience and their inspiration on the wane. Not ...
Cut during the summer and fall of 1972, ELO 2 was where Jeff Lynne started rebuilding the sound of the Electric Light Orchestra following the departure of Roy Wood from the original lineup. It was as personal an effort as Lynne had ever made in music, showcasing his work as singer, songwriter, guitarist, sometime synthesizer player, and producer, ...
The Best of 70's Supergroups is a thoroughly entertaining 14-track collection that contains a wealth of album-rock and hard rock hits, including such radio staples as "More Than A Feeling," "Evil Woman, " "Come Sail Away, " "Taking Care of Business, " "American Woman, " "Black Magic Woman, " "Green-Eyed Lady, " "Sweet Home Alabama" and "We're an ...
The last ELO album to make a major impact on popular music, Out of the Blue was of a piece with its lavishly produced predecessor, A New World Record, but it's a much more mixed bag as an album. For starters, it was a double LP, a format that has proved daunting to all but a handful of rock artists, and was no less so here. The songs were flowing ...
Time-Life Music's Sounds of the Seventies: Classic '70s features some of the decade's biggest hits: "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas, "Shining Star" by Earth, Wind and Fire, "Don't Bring Me Down" by ELO, "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers, "All the Young Dudes" by Mott the Hoople and "He Ain't Heavy, He's My ...
Sony Music Special Products' Burning Bright provides a good sampling of Electric Light Orchestra's classic material, balancing hits with album tracks. There are enough hits -- "Turn to Stone," "Livin' Thing," "Strange Music," "Do Ya," "Rock 'n' Roll Is King" -- to satisfy curious casual fans, while there are enough strong album tracks to whet ...
This album, recorded at Long Beach Auditorium on May 12, 1974, appeared as a limited release in a handful of countries in the mid-1970s, and showed up as a remastered, somewhat improved LP in 1985. But this marks its debut as a compact disc, made from the upgraded 1980s master. The resulting CD is, for starters, really, really loud, a far cry from ...
ELO's smart blend of pop and rock with modernly orchestrated classical music flourished throughout the '70s and '80s, since their sound was one of a kind. Plush arrangements that drowned themselves in bright synthesizers and vibrant guitar gave way to a brand new type of music, giving the Electric Light Orchestra a distinguished setting atop the ...
To commemorate the end of the century, Sony Music assembled the gargantuan 26-disc box set, Sony Music 100 Years: Soundtrack for a Century. The title was imposing, as was the idea behind it -- to chronicle the life of the oldest record label in the music industry. To be clear, Sony Music has not existed for 100 years, but the heart of its catalog, ...
EMI's 2006 triple-CD set The Harvest Years 1970-1973 is a more limited -- yet also somewhat expanded -- vault exploration covering some of the same territory as the U.K.-issued double-CD editions of the Electric Light Orchestra and ELO 2 albums. There are no project "leftovers" such as fragments from "Lost Planet," or any BBC tracks -- everything ...
Although it contains all the hits and the remastering sounds superb, the three-disc box set Afterglow is likely to be more ELO than anyone but the most devoted fans would want from an anthology. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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![Discovery [Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/f68758t4lmw_t.jpg)
![A New World Record [Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/h41409cwdzi_t.jpg)
![Time [Expanded]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/e79623dl30e_t.jpg)
![Face the Music [Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/h41410ew6qi_t.jpg)
![Eldorado [Remastered]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/e7962203au9_t.jpg)
![On the Third Day [Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/h41411k0dvk_t.jpg)
![Balance of Power [Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/i45483lv9aj_t.jpg)
![ELO II [US Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/h25648fzop0_t.jpg)
![Out of the Blue [30th Anniversary Edition]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/i41852o0dkv_t.jpg)
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