I had this on cassette in 1978, and loved it then. But it went the way of all cassettes. And everyone forgot about E.L.O. for twenty years.
It was via Stephin Merritt that I remembered them again. His list of the great recordings of the 20th century has Out of the Blue as the entry for 1977. So I bought this again (for a fiver, from Fopp) in September 2000. A couple of years later the Delgados did a cover version of Mr Blue Sky on a Peel session, and a couple of years after that the original version of the song featured heavily in the trailer for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (thus creating the expectation of hearing more of it in the film, though it didn't feature at all).
For a double album, it's a cracker. Anthony Wilson has this theory that all the influential albums of the sixties were doubles, and all the influential albums of the seventies were singles. Well maybe this was never influential, but there's absolutely no filler on it. And most CDs that clock in at 70 minutes these days are hard to listen to all the way through, but this one zips along. Great tunes, smart (if dated) arrangements, and a good mix of drama and pathos.
MusicBrainz entry for this album |
Comments