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Out Of The Blue

by

Electric Light Orchestra

 
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Out Of The Blue
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Avg: 4.0 (370 ratings)

  • Date Released: February 20, 2007
  • Genre: Rock/Pop
  • Style: Rock
  • Label: Epic/Legacy
  • Copyright: (P) 1972, 1977, 1978, 2006 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

One of the most beautifully bombastic things you'll ever hear

  • We Say...

    Review by Mike McGonigal

    ELO's 1977 album Out of the Blue is (very) arguably one of the greatest records in rock history, approaching such canonical recordings as Sister Lovers, Loveless and Exile on Main Street. For this double album — one that features an intergalactic spaceship with an eight track tape loading bay on the cover, lead ELO dude Jeff Lynne took the maximalist approach he perfected on A New World Record and multiplied it by itself. The result is one of the most beautifully bombastic things you'll ever hear, with tons of information packed into each genre exercise — er, I mean, song. Did I mention that the songs are intense? Intense in the way that eating an entire bowl of cookie dough at once is intense. ELO could be said to share a lot with metal in three regards: an anthemic bent, an unreal stiffness and a pummeling that's supposedly related to European classical music. Take "Sweet Talkin' Woman," one of the four top ten hits on the album, a really rocking prog-lite number. The song starts with strings playing syrupy sweet melodies, the guitar kicks in with a clean, '50s rock-style line, then vocodered backing vocals are beamed in from outer space. The acoustic guitar and Lynne's multi-tracked vocals come in all at once, along with the drums played by Lynne's longtime cohort Bev Bevan. The backing vocals ape '50s pop, the piano comes in during the next section and then the strings take over again. In a word? Colossal. "Mr Blue Sky," which closes side three on the vinyl version, might be the best thing they ever did. It even has a decent lyric in the line, "Hey you with the pretty face/ welcome to the human race." It's unabashedly joyous, earnest and geeky. No wonder critics and real rock dudes and dudettes don't take this stuff seriously. None of the songs are even about heroin, suicidal depression or revolution. Man!

  • They Say...

    Review by Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

    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 fast and freely from Jeff Lynne at the time, however, and well more than half of what is here is very solid, at least as songs if not necessarily as recordings. "Sweet Talkin' Woman" and "Turn to Stone" are among the best songs in the group's output, and much of the rest is very entertaining. The heavy sound of the orchestra, however, as well as the layer upon layer of vocal overdubs, often seem out of place. All in all, the group was trying too hard to generate a substantial sounding double LP, complete with a suite, "Concerto for a Rainy Day." The latter is the nadir of the album, an effort at conceptual rock that seemed archaic even in 1977. Another chunk is filled up with what might best be called art-rock mood music ("The Whale"), before you finally get to the relief of a basic rocker like "Birmingham Blues." Even here, the group couldn't leave well enough alone -- rather than ending it on that note, they had to finish the album with "Wild West Hero," a piece of ersatz movie music that adds nothing to what you've heard over the previous 65 minutes. In its defense, Out of the Blue was massively popular and did become the centerpiece of a huge worldwide tour that earned the group status as a major live attraction for a time. [Out of the Blue was reissued in 2007 as a 30th Anniversary Edition with new photos, liner notes and three bonus tracks, including "Quick and the Daft," "Latitude 88 North" and a home demo of "Wild West Hero".]

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