Noteworthy Notions - ELO : 'Face The Music'

NOTEWORTHY NOTIONS

'Face The Music'
ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA - 1975

The dawn of the ‘ELO Sound’ was upon us with the release of 1975’s ‘Face The Music’, and alhough it would take another album for Lynne and gang to truly perfect it’s craft, this LP is still a fine collection of wonderful material.

A very eerie sounding album (maybe as a result of the sound quality that leaves a little to be desired), ‘Face the music’ contains it’s fair share of haunting melodys and forceful rock in equal doses, with maestro lynne’s stamp on each cut. ELO had had major success in America with Eldorado, and ‘Face the Music’ was even more acclaimed. It would still take one more album for the Ork to finally catch the attention of the homeland, but they still found a big singles success with the R&Bish ‘Evil Woman’, a song that Jeff took just three minutes to write as a filler (it just shows that you never know how much of an impact little things can make).

‘Strange Magic’ also became an ELO classic, with some wonderful cascading guitar and heart tugging singing from Lynne. The album opens with the six minute instrumental ‘Fire On High’, an utterly fantastic instrumental with creepy sound effects (imcluding my favourite style of sonic pant wetting, spooky reversed voices) and beautifully precise twelve string guitar strumming.

‘Waterfall’ is also a beautiful tune, with yet more perfect singing, great pianowork from Richard Tandy and som great cello sound. ‘Poker’ is a classic rocker and ‘Down Home Town’ is some fun and corny Roy Wood-esque rock. ‘One Summer Dream’ is another haunting yet beautiful track that sees the album off with a very alienating fade out. The only really weak tune on this set is the single ‘Nightrider’, which, despite a relatively pleasant tune, fails to inspire and I am not surpirsed that the release of this track as a single failed to chart.

This album was the defintie turning point for ELO on a creative level, and it would take just one more album to seal the deal. It certainly did that, and then some.

Review by Jim Stanton

Release Details

Tracklisting

Fire On High
Waterfall
Evil Woman
Nightrider
Poker
Strange Magic
Down Home Town
One Summer Dream