Focus - Moving Waves

Released - October 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Mike Vernon

Selected Personnel - Thijs Van Leer (Organ/Flute/Vocals/Mellotron/Piano); Jan Akkerman (Guitar/Bass); Cyril Havermans (Bass); Pierre Van Der Linden (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Hocus Pocus

In discussing Focus's debut album In And Out Of Focus, I mentioned how strange it is that a band that had very little lasting impact on the world's musical consciousness as a whole should have been such a crucial figure in my discovery of prog music, an discovery that went on to fuel my obsession for music as a whole. In general, Focus were a bunch of strange guys from the Netherlands messing about with jazz fusion and the like that the world largely ignored. Briefly, from 1971 to 1972, people actually paid a small amount of attention to them, and it was pretty much entirely down to the hit single from their second album, Moving Waves. It's quite simply one of the most recognisable instant classics in the history of prog, and will always be the band's crowning achievement. The album it belongs to is also a masterpiece and, in the wake of my previous review for Tarkus, it really demonstrates that it's possible to make overblown, pseudo-classical instrumental prog music that's really incendiary and exciting and compelling without ever resorting to the tedium that Emerson, Lake & Palmer would often find themselves indulging in.

After the oddball weirdness of their debut, Focus splintered for a while - guitarist Jan Akkerman, perhaps the key figure behind the sound of that first album, departed to form a new band with bassist Cyril Havermans and drummer Pierre Van Der Linden. When the remaining members of Focus went their separate ways, founding member Thijs Van Leer joined Akkerman on organ and flute to create a new Focus (drummer Van Der Linden would come to be a crucial member of the band and still plays with them today). One of the big lessons learned on In And Out Of Focus had been that the band really came alive when jamming through fusion-inspired instrumentals as opposed to awkwardly crooning through more traditional songs, so Moving Waves became a masterful template of the style Focus would come to be masters of over subsequent years. There is only one song with lyrics here, and it's the album's low point - the title track features Van Leer crooning some lyrics by Sufi poet Inayat Khan over his own unaccompanied piano, and it's a fairly tedious affair. Other than that, the band devote themselves to their instrumental work and it's never short of exhilarating.

Up first is that song, the huge hit "Hocus Pocus." Built around Akkerman's frenetic heavy guitar riff, which anticipated a lot of heavy metal in the 80s, the song veers from thrashing hard rock to typically Focus-esque nonsense interludes, involving Van Leer's absurd and iconic yodelling as well as his breathless flute solos and cartoonish accordion. It's one of few songs that manages to be absolutely clownish and ridiculous at exactly the same time as being undeniably, epically cool and effortlessly cements Focus's place in the annals of history. It's followed by a couple of songs that demonstrate the band's stylistic range, with the classical guitar of "Le Clochard" and the Medieval-styled flute of "Janis." "Moving Waves" sits in the middle, the album's only dud, before segueing into "Focus II," the second of a series of self-titled instrumentals that the band continue putting out to this day (I think they're up to ten of them now). It's the most overtly jazz fusion-influenced song on offer, shifting from Akkerman's stately lead guitar line to a more energetic full-band workout. The second half is taken up with a lengthy suite that more than gives "Tarkus" a run for its money. Ostensibly an adaptation of an opera about Orpheus and Euridice by Jacopo Peri. However, whereas Emerson, Lake & Palmer would tend to be slavishly faithful to their classical influences in a way that robbed the original work of its grandeur but also robbed their actual music of much heart or authenticity, Focus totally reinvents that little-known opera into a fusion epic that's stately and unusual and interesting but still has the beating heart of a great rock song. From the slow-moving grandeur of its opening movements, "Eruption" really hits its stride when it reaches the incendiary guitar of a section named "Tommy" after its composer, Tom Barlage of the Dutch band Solution. "Tommy" shifts seamlessly into a frenzied jam session that then leads us back into the classical beauty of the opera, with Van Leer's flute to the fore. The piece as a whole is a masterclass in how to do prog right - for a piece almost twenty-five minutes long, it almost never dips into indulgent meandering (Van Der Linden's lengthy drum solo is the only section that outstays its welcome), and manages to achieve greatness both as incendiary rock and grandiose classical music, without cheapening either influence. It's one of the truly great instrumental prog epics.

This is an album that's been close to my heart since I was very young, and that came to take on an even greater significance at uni when I began to understand its place in the context of prog as a whole. For a band that, besides "Hocus Pocus" and the later "Sylvia," virtually never had any impact on the music world, Focus are a precociously talented bunch, and genuinely give some of the biggest prog bands of the era cause to be embarrassed and to up their game. For me, the later Focus 3 is perhaps their best work - Moving Waves dips a little in the middle as it struggles to match the greatness of the two great pieces that bookend it - but their second album is a true masterwork, and, after the intermittently great oddness of their debut, is one of the greatest examples of a band really honing their sound for their second album. One of the great prog classics doomed to rarely be heard by anyone but a die-hard prog fan.

Track Listing:

1. Hocus Pocus (Thijs Van Leer & Jan Akkerman)

2. Le Clochard (Jan Akkerman)

3. Janis (Jan Akkerman)

4. Moving Waves (Thijs Van Leer & Inayat Khan)

5. Focus II (Thijs Van Leer)

6. Eruption (Thijs Van Leer; Jan Akkerman; Tom Barlage; Eelko Nobel & Pierre Van Der Linden)

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Tarkus

Released - June 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Greg Lake

Selected Personnel - Keith Emerson (Keyboards/Synthesiser/Piano/Organ); Greg Lake (Vocals/Bass/Guitar); Carl Palmer (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Tarkus

ELP are a weird one for me. Logically, they should be a shoe-in for being a band I'd really unreservedly enjoy, being one of the biggest figureheads of prog in the early 70s. But somehow, they've always managed to be the one big prog band that I've never really managed to shake my reservations about. For every genuinely brilliant prog song they made, there are a whole host of overly self-indulgent drum solos or pompous reworkings of classical fugues or directionless jazz interludes. They seem to sum up a lot of what makes prog occasionally tiresome for me, the insistence on pushing inventiveness and musical daring into territory that ends up being unlistenable and tuneless. That said, they did find time to make two albums that make it onto my list, most notably their later masterpiece Brain Salad Surgery, which almost manages to avoid self-indulgent noodling entirely (almost). Slightly less of an outright success but still hugely enjoyable is Tarkus, their breakthrough album.

By 1971, ELP had already achieved a certain degree of critical notice via their self-titled debut album. Keyboardist Keith Emerson of The Nice had met Greg Lake, the singer and bassist of King Crimson, in San Francisco and the two had found that their musical styles and approaches complemented each other well and that they found the idea of working on a musical project together exciting. Rounded out by drummer Carl Palmer, formerly of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and at the time playing with Atomic Rooster, the band set about making prog music with a slightly different structural model. Here, in contrast to most other prog bands of the time, the focus was very squarely on Emerson's keyboard wizardry. Though Lake would occasionally factor in the odd guitar line, his principal instrument was bass, and this was perhaps the first prog band where keyboard theatrics took precedence over guitar solos. Not only that, ELP would go on to take far greater direct influence from classical music than any other prog band. While prog in general was frequently built on the idea of writing rock music using classical techniques, ELP went the whole hog and ended up arranging convoluted rock reworkings of full classical suites, though whether this was a logical and justifiable extension of the essence of prog or just a show of pretentiousness that resulted in music lacking either the grandeur or nuance of actual classical music, or the heart and authenticity of rock, is a point for conjecture.

Their debut album consistedly largely of such shows of meandering pretentiousness, with the odd inspired moment, most notably the wonderful Lake-penned ballad "Lucky Man," a fairly straightforward acoustic guitar number fired into the stratosphere at the end by Emerson's space-age synthesiser wails. After that, the band had attempted to release a live recording of an arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition, which their record label refused to release, fearing commercial failure. Though "Lucky Man" had been a minor hit, the band perhaps felt the need to up their game to really make a name for themselves, and their response to this pressure was Tarkus. Essentially, Tarkus is built entirely around the side-long title track, one of the great prog epics. It's supposedly a tale of "evolution in reverse" that has something to do with the armadillo-cum-armoured-tank creature on the album's cover, and perhaps something to do with some sort of war, though as with prog, the story being told is more or less irrelevant. What really impresses is the musical ability on show, and if there's one thing ELP really excel at, it's virtuoso showboating. Emerson and Palmer are given ample opportunity to let loose on "Tarkus" as it swirls from its ominous, portentous opening into its jazzy hard-rock middle section, via the chaotic and frenetic madness of Emerson's keyboards skills, before ultimately winding up with a sort of funereal battle march where Lake finally gets his chance to shine with his majesterial reverbed guitar solo. In general, Lake is the fairly stolid anchor holding the band together, while Emerson explodes and Palmer clatters around him, but every now and again he'll deliver a searing guitar line or nimble bass solo that reminds you of his talent. More than anything else, Lake's vocals, which can veer from a fiery shout to an angelic lilt, remind you of how keenly King Crimson felt the loss of such a great vocalist.

After the epic progressions of the title track, the album's second side can only be a let-down, but it's a shame just how true that is. Generally, on most prog albums built around a side-long epic, the band manage to find enough inspiration to make at least one other good song. Not so on Tarkus - though the honky-tonk silliness of "Jeremy Bender" is fairly good fun, the other songs on side two are generally directionless and do little to grab the attention. What the album really needs is another Lake acoustic number, as they so often end up being the highlights, as with "Lucky Man" or "From The Beginning" on Trilogy. Still, the band seem to be aware of the fact that they were running on fumes after the creativity of the title track, so mercifully none of these other songs outstay their welcome, with the second side being mercifully short. Still, though the second half is a huge letdown, "Tarkus" itself is a masterful showcase for the individual talents that made ELP great when they really put their minds to it. In the prog-hungry climate of the early 70s, the pomposity of Tarkus made it a huge hit, so much so that the band's record label reluctantly agreed to release Pictures At An Exhibition in the wake of it. The next full studio album would be Trilogy, an album which included the beautiful "From The Beginning" and an enormously exciting reworking of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown," but that otherwise retreated back into the instrumental self-indulgent noodling of their previous work. It wasn't until the following year's Brain Salad Surgery that the trio managed to recapture the spirit of invention and brilliance first exhibited here and deliver their masterwork.

Track Listing:

1. Tarkus (Keith Emerson & Greg Lake)

2. Jeremy Bender (Keith Emerson & Greg Lake)

3. Bitches Crystal (Keith Emerson & Greg Lake)

4. The Only Way (Hymn) (Keith Emerson & Greg Lake)

5. Infinite Space (Conclusion) (Keith Emerson & Carl Palmer)

6. A Time And A Place (Keith Emerson; Greg Lake & Carl Palmer)

7. Are You Ready Eddy? (Keith Emerson; Greg Lake & Carl Palmer)

Elton John - Madman Across The Water

Released - November 1971

Genre - Rock

Producer - Gus Dudgeon

Selected Personnel - Elton John (Vocals/Piano); Davey Johnstone (Guitar); Caleb Quaye (Guitar); BJ Cole (Pedal Steel); Roger Pope (Drums); David Glover (Bass); Rick Wakeman (Organ); Herbie Flowers (Bass); Ray Cooper (Percussion); Chris Spedding (Guitar); Nigel Olsson (Drums); Terry Cox (Drums); Lesley Duncan (Backing Vocals); Paul Buckmaster (Orchestral Arrangements)

Standout Track - Tiny Dancer

I've chosen to locate the story that introduced me to this incredible album in Christmas 2004. It might have been another holiday at around the same time, but I believe me, my brother and my dad were en route to New York for New Year. As I've pointed out elsewhere, by this time I'd already spent a good ten years becoming obsessed by Elton John's greatest hits, but I had yet to make the realisation that diving into an artist's complete discography could yield great stuff you might otherwise have missed out on. In hindsight, that realisation was a seminal moment in the development of my musical consciousness, and it started here. I was on one side of the airport, buying a magazine I think, when my brother, who at this stage was the bigger music-lover of the two of us, rushed over and dragged me back to the departures lounge, claiming they were playing Elton John's "best song" and I needed to hear it. On being told it was a song I'd never heard of called "Tiny Dancer," my curiosity was piqued - how could his best song be one that I hadn't heard on his greatest hits album? By the time we got back there, the song had finished, but I was curious and, through my brother, soon discovered Tumbleweed Connection and the masterpiece therein that is "Talking Old Soldiers." Having had my Road to Damascus moment of realising that artists made good songs outside of their big hits, I made my next objective to track down the parent album to the song my brother had raved about. That album was Madman Across The Water, and it took a hold of me instantly. I still cite it as Elton's best album (his great masterpiece Goodbye Yellow Brick Road contains some better songs but lacks the consistency and maturity of this earlier classic), and when I saw Elton live back in September, he had the album cover embroidered on the back of his jacket, so I like to feel it's an album that's similarly close to his heart.

Having assembled their first truly great album with the previous year's Tumbleweed Connection, which was stylistically (and at least loosely conceptually) built around themes of Americana, Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin followed it up by going back to basics somewhat, no longer writing songs to serve any sort of overarching concept but simply aiming to make an album of simple, phenomenal piano-based rock. No longer are any compromises being made to shoehorn in a story about the Old West or a country vibe (the most overtly conceptual song on the previous album, the rather forced country vibe of "Country Comfort" is by far the most laboured song on offer), and in the place of those compromises is a near-perfect selection of songs. The only song that does go out of its way to make some sort of conceptual point is the masterful "Indian Sunset," a sort of world-weary, resigned battle cry of an Indian chief that, despite its corniness, saves itself by virtue of its musical ferocity and sheer guts, escalating as it does from an a cappella meditation to a full-blown band workout. By and large, the same band returns from before, with the significant addition of Davey Johnstone on electric guitar. Johnstone has, with a few occasional sabbaticals, been a mainstay of Elton's live and studio band to this day, and brings several significant new things to the table here. Elton now feels very comfortable writing for a full band in a way that doesn't detract from the focus of his own voice and masterful piano playing, but that also doesn't sideline his band members or make them redundant. Indeed, what really shines about every single one of these songs is their dynamic range. The two opening tracks, an emotionally hefty double bill of committed ballads, both range from a tender piano-led verse to a rousing, yelping, full-band chorus in a way that doesn't feel cheap or contrived but simply serves as a masterful display of dynamic control. Elsewhere, the aforementioned "Indian Sunset" develops like some sort of Hollywood epic in fast forward, and "Madman Across The Water" starts with the hushed, almost menacing strums of Johnstone's guitar and swirls into a ferocious maelstrom at the chorus.

Lyrically, Taupin is on fine form on Madman... - as with Bowie, the idea of the lyrics on an Elton John song is rarely to tell a specific story or convey a specific idea, but rather they take the form of impressionistic poetry that the listener can use to paint their own canvas. Elton's impassioned vocals imbue these lyrics with swathes of emotion, nowhere more so than on the beautiful "Levon," but it's anyone's guess as to what the random images of "Tiny Dancer," "Razor Face" or "Madman Across The Water" actually mean. It's arguable that that makes Taupin a weak lyricist, that a lyric should be able to convey a meaning, but for me the collage-like nature of his words has always made it easier to adapt these songs to any personal interpretation one requires. For me, these songs have taken on a whole host of different meanings over the years, always shifting depending on what's going on in my own life when I listen to them. I think "Tiny Dancer" is about being in love, I think "Levon" and "Razor Face" are about growing old, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that these songs are masterpieces played to perfection by a band and an artist at the peak of their powers. There is only one misstep on the whole album, and that's the fairly tepid "Rotten Peaches," which is almost close to being a misguided retread of the country territory of the previous album's "Country Comfort." Everything else here puts a huge smile on my face whenever I hear it and every one of them has a good stab at being among the best rock songs of the early 70s.

In the greater sweep of things, Madman Across The Water would be the peak of the more "credible" singer-songwriter era of Elton's career, the time when the focus was more on writing organic, authentic rock music rather than crafting hit singles. He would follow it up with the excellent Honky Cheateau, which was  great but a bit of a step down, before fully committing to the idea of being a hit artist. That later stage of his career would continue to deliver incredible music even if it was behind a glossier commercial sheen, but for many people (myself included), this is where Elton John and his cohorts were at the absolute peak of their abilities - anybody who dismisses him as a purveyor of light entertainment and radio-friendly singles needs to listen to this album to realise just how talented he can be at delivering top-quality rock music.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

1. Tiny Dancer

2. Levon

3. Razor Face

4. Madman Across The Water

5. Indian Sunset

6. Holiday Inn

7. Rotten Peaches

8. All The Nasties

9. Goodbye

Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left

Released - September 1969

Genre - Folk

Producer - Joe Boyd

Selected Personnel - Nick Drake (Vocals/Guitar); Paul Harris (Piano); Richard Thompson (Guitar); Danny Thompson (Bass)

Standout Track - River Man

This is an album and, indeed, an artist that's still relatively new to me, so it'll be difficult for this review to be particularly in-depth or anecodtal. This album has yet to take on huge reserves of significance for me, or to really ensconce itself into my consciousness. All I do know is that, at this early stage, it's a really lovely album I really enjoy listening to, and that, combined with its fearsome reputation amongst fans of 60s British folk, earns it its place in the list. My good friend Emily, who I've mentioned frequently on this blog, recently jetted off to Vietnam for two years to teach English to foreign kids. At her leaving party, she introduced me to a friend of hers named Emma, who has also recently jetted off on exactly the same mission. Emma and I found that our musical tastes closely mirrored one another's, or at the very least interested one another, and we decided to set up something of a cultural exchange. One of the artists she recommended most vehemently was Nick Drake. Drake was a figure who was familiar to me by reputation - a famously tortured figure, he died at the age of 26 as a result of a drug overdose (suicide or accident remains unclear) leaving behind a legacy of just three quiet, understated folk albums that were more or less ignored at the time but, as with so many artists who died before their time, have gone on to earn cult status. While Drake had always been a figure that interested me, I'm still to this day a relative novice in the world of 60s UK folk, and had never really felt anything specifically spurring me to give him a listen. As it turned out, the specific recommendation of a friend was just what I needed, and I discovered something really quite special that might well end up opening the door to the likes of Fairport Convention for me.

Drake had no recording experience prior to recording Five Leaves Left, but managed to impress veteran producer Joe Boyd, who had stewarded Fairport Convention, John Martyn and the Incredible String Band to success via his live performances, and ended up collaborating with him on his debut album. Ultimately, the atmosphere behind the recording was not the most positive - Drake was surprisingly outspoken and assertive for such an inexperienced artist, insisting on a more organic and natural sound, while Boyd pushed for a more expansive album, including full orchestrations and overdubs. Boyd, being the experienced producer, won out and the album features no songs that don't contain some kind of overdubbed part, (including guitar from Fairport Convetion's Richard Thompson and bass from the Pentangle's Richard Thompson) and that's a mixed blessing - in places, such as in Harry Robinson's stirring, dramatic string orchestrations for the wonderful "River Man," these overdubs serve as an effective counterpoint to Drake's voice and acousitc guitar, while in other places, such as on "Way To Blue," those same string parts serve as an over-the-top extravagance that drowns out some of the purity of Drake's songwriting. Ultimately, on his later masterpiece Pink Moon, which consists almost entirely of unaccompanied acoustic songs, Drake would prove how powerful and beautiful his songwriting could be without recourse to orchestral or full-band accompaniment, but here some of that organic earthiness he was chasing is drowned out by Boyd's insistence on grandeur.

I don't know quite what I expected from this album, but I was surprised by it. I think from Drake's reputation I expected something more overtly harrowing, more obviously preoccupied with his demons, in order to justify his reputation as some sort of doomed artist. But by and large this album is quietly pastoral and reflective, the soft tones of Drake's voice lilting on the ear, and the melodies slow, simple, hummable. It's also rare that one feels overtly as though Drake is wrestling with his depression, with is supposedly already a huge influence on his songwriting even at this stage. His lyrics are generally impressionistic and abstract rather than directly personal - Drake is a very English folk songwriter in that respect, having no political axe to grind like the Dylans of this world, but also shying away from overtly personal solipsistic soul-baring, choosing instead to express himself through a series of images that only fleetingly hint at his own state of mind. It's true that "River Man" could be interpreted as a song about a man on the banks of a river contemplating suicide, but it could just as easily be about a man confused by the decisions he has to make in his life trying to find solace and answers in the world around him. There are other songs wholly devoid of angst and self-doubt, with the gorgeous summery closer "Saturday Sun" being a simple heartfelt paean to the importance of taking advantage of opportunities that may otherwise pass you by. The only songs besides "River Man" that really do stick out as cries for help are "Man In A Shed" which, despite its simple upbeat melody and fairly offhand lyrics, is a barely concealed cry for help and companionship disguised as some sort of children's fable, while the masterful "Fruit Tree" is genuinely eerie - in it, via the metaphor of a fruit tree, Drake expounds at length about the vacuity of fame, and about the fact that it is only ever really achieved after the death of the artist, words which would be borne out all too well by his own tragic demise.

It's not all brilliance, though - the aforementioned "Way To Blue" is rendered numbing by its over-the-top strings, and the flute on "The Thoughts Of Mary Jane" has a similarly deadening effect, while "Three Hours" is an overlong foray into self-indulgent psychedelia. But it showcases a man with an ear for creating memorable, sweet-sounding tunes and for singing them beautifully, and, in brief flashes, with a real talent for presenting genuinely compelling lyrical ideas. Pink Moon is a more consistent and effecting and authentic portrayal of what the man can do, devoid of some of the overcomplications of this album, but it still definitely earns its place in the annals of history as the very promising first efforts of a man who really should have had more time to create beautiful music.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Nick Drake.

1. Time Has Told Me

2. River Man

3. Three Hours

4. Way To Blue

5. Day Is Done

6. Cello Song

7. The Thoughts Of Mary Jane

8. Man In A Shed

9. Fruit Tree

10. Saturday Sun

The Electric Light Orchestra - The Electric Light Orchestra

Released - December 1971

Genre - Art Rock

Producer - Roy Wood & Jeff Lynne

Selected Personnel - Jeff Lynne (Vocals/Piano/Keyboards/Guitar/Bass/Percussion); Roy Wood (Vocals/Cello/Bass/Guitar/Oboe/Bassoon/Clarinet/Percussion); Bev Bevan (Drums/Percussion); Bill Hunt (Horns); Steve Woolam (Violin)

Standout Track - 10538 Overture

The Electric Light Orchestra, for me, are one of the ultimate examples of the significance a particular musical artist can have in your heart even if they're not an artist that you listen to particularly often these days any more. Between the ages of roughly 14 and 19 ELO were never far away from being my most-listened-to artist, and gradually opened the door to all the music that would come to define huge chunks of my life. While the music they led me on to ultimately came to be more meaningful, exciting and complex than the majority of ELO's stuff ever was, I simply can't deny the importance or the brilliance of their work and the impact it had on me. Essentially, in 2004 I saw Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind as a romantic teenager and was blown away by it (it's still one of my all-time favourite songs). Immediately snapping up the DVD and the soundtrack as soon as I could, I found a certain song by this band entitled "Mr Blue Sky" on the soundtrack (it was used in the theatrical trailer, not the film itself) and remember consciously thinking it was the greatest song I'd ever heard. Gradually I sought out all their work, starting with greatest hits compilations and big-selling albums before my deepening obsession with music at uni drove me to find their more obscure work. It was my love of ELO that prompted my step-dad to introduce me to Supertramp by dubbing them "the thinking man's ELO," and it was my subsequent love of Supertramp that really prompted me to delve into this obsession. So I have a lot to thank them for.

Of course, ELO are frequently dismissed as rather trite purveyors of lightweight disco-inflected pop rock, and that's an attitude that does them a real disservice - firstly, while it's true that the majority of their most popular work was more concerned with getting people dancing and buying records than it was with artistic credibility or musical invention, one simply can't deny how incredibly good this band were at achieving what they wanted to achieve and crafting hugely catchy, well-crafted pop music. More significantly, it's an attitude that totally ignores ELO's roots as one of the most interesting and innovative art rock bands of the early 70s. ELO arose out of the ashes of the Birmingham-based rock band The Move which, by 1970, was beginning to become a tiresome and uninspiring project for core members Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan. Searching for new ways to reinvigorate their sound, Wood decided to take his cue from the Beatles who, on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had first suggested the possibility of making rock music that incorporated classical instrumentation. Wood would attempt to go one further, with all the music this time written principally around classical instruments rather than the other way round, with those classical arrangements being the band's raison d'etre rather than just a way of ornamenting the sound. The new band would be built around the core trio, with Bevan on drums and percussion, Lynne playing most of the more conventional rock instruments including guitars and keyboards, and Wood focussing on the classical instruments, mainly strings and woodwinds.

Flying in the face of what the casual ELO listener might associate with the band, this sounds daring, unusual and radically new, standing up well alongside some of the best experimental rock and prog rock of the time. It's very much the album where, more than ever, the band's "orchestra" remit was pushed to the forefront more than anything else. Whereas there would come a time when ELO would justify that "orchestra" moniker simply by overdubbing a few violin parts over a disco backing, here it's a grandiose, scraping, braying orchestral polyphony, with the sawing of cellos and the blaring of horns rendering it totally unlike anything that had come before. In places, the fixation on delivering a concept successfully takes precedence over decent songwriting - "Look At Me Now" is a fairly trying melody over a tuneless scraping cello part and an irritating oboe squeal, while "The Battle Of Marston Moor" was so avant-garde and self-consciously baroque that Bevan refused to play on it, meaning songwriter Wood had to play most of the instruments for the song himself. Where this self-titled debut is most successful, however, is where it delivers what makes this concept so fascinating, which is to say, where the classical approach is used to deliver what is, undoubtedly, rock music, rather than a sort of weird modern, skewed version of baroque and renaissance music.

The best example, of course, is the album's hit single, Jeff Lynne's "10538 Overture," a truly great rock song reminiscent of some of the best of the Beatles' later work. The mildly distorted descending guitar part, echoed in that same sawing cello and the fanfare of the horns, makes for the band's first indisputable masterpiece. "Mr Radio" is the other great pop song on the album, and heavily anticipates the sort of radio-friendly fare Lynne would later go on to develop with the band. However, that's not to say that Lynne is the only one who manages to make Wood's concept work here. Although some of Wood's contributions are overly pompous and self-important, there are two that really stand out. "First Movement (Jumping Biz)" is a tremendously fun and energetic showcase for classical guitar that's one of the most instantly catchy pieces of music to use such a specific and old-fashioned arrangement or instrumentation, while "Whisper In The Night" is a truly beautiful ballad that hints at the possibility of what great things ELO could have achieved if Roy Wood had been granted more time to push his concept into new directions.

It's certainly true, though, that listening to this, it feels like an album divided between two creative minds, one that had a good ear for catchy pop music, and one who yearned to be an avant-garde musical pioneer. Ultimately, these were tensions and differences that Wood and Lynne were aware of themselves, and Wood soon departed to pursue his own musical projects, leaving the ELO concept in Lynne's hands. Strangely, considering how Wood had been the driving force behind the more avant-garde aspects of this debut album, he went on to form Wizzard, purveyors of fairly forgettable pop fluff, most notably the irritating festive "classic" "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," while pop impresario Lynne would continue to make genuinely daring and innovative music with ELO for another few years before the band morphed into a very different entity to achieve superstardom. It's wrong to say that the band ELO changed into are worse than the band they started out as, but it's also wrong to say they're better - they're more or less a totally different entity, and fans of art-rock who assume they dislike the band's disco and pop stylings should certainly listen to their early work as it's of surprisingly high quality in that genre. This debut is certainly an uneven ride, but it's the most complete statement of the idea Wood wanted to ultimately deliver, and contains some truly fantastic moments. Give it a go, even if you've heard "Mr Blue Sky" and think, for whatever unimaginable reason, that you don't like it. This is a different beast altogether.

Track Listing:

1. 10538 Overture (Jeff Lynne)

2. Look At Me Now (Roy Wood)

3. Nellie Takes Her Bow (Jeff Lynne)

4. The Battle Of Marston Moor (July 2nd 1644) (Roy Wood)

5. First Movement (Jumping Biz) (Roy Wood)

6. Mr Radio (Jeff Lynne)

7. Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre) (Jeff Lynne)

8. Queen Of The Hours (Jeff Lynne)

9. Whisper In The Night (Roy Wood)