CALLING AMERICA (SINGLE)

"Calling America", another good song from their "Balance of Power" album from 1986, was played very much in some FM radio stations in my city (maybe more than "So Serious"). Maybe it was the best choice from the songs of this album to be released as a single, and in fact it was the most successful single in the Hit Parade charts from all the singles released from this album (it reached #28 in the U.K. and #18 in the U.S.). Even with this success, maybe the members of ELO (and maybe the record company too) were not very happy with the situation that ELO was having then as a band, and maybe they also were tired of being in a band too. In fact, the "Balance of Power" album sounds in some places like being recorded and released more as a "contractual obligation album", but it still has some very good quality in some places. Maybe they were a tired band recording a somewhat sounding "tired" last album. In my opinion, they said a temporal "goodbye" for several years as a band in a very good way until Jeff Lynne recorded and released the "Zoom " album as an ELO album (with some collaborations from Richard Tandy). An album which is more like a solo album from Lynne but which was released under the ELO`s name for good marketing reasons.

Anyway, "Calling America" is a good song, with, as I have mentioned in other reviews, all the "ingredients" that made a very characteristic song from the mid eighties: good keyboards arrangements with very typical eighties sounds, electronic drums, and in the case of ELO, very good vocals arrangements by Jeff Lynne. In this album in particular his guitar playing was mostly put in the background by him, and more emphasis was given to the keyboards, maybe due to the absence of orchestral arrangements, a thing which also put this album as "different" in comparison to other albums from their discography.

"Caught in a Trap" is also a good song, very "programmed" in some sound terms (even the drums could have been, at least in some parts, being programmed). Again, this song has very good vocals arrangements by Jeff Lynne. It also has a brief but good keyboard solo by Richard Tandy. This song was also released (with another song called "Destination Unknown", antother B-side song which was released in the 12" version of this single) in the remastered and expanded version of their "Balance of Power" album in 2007.