FACE THE MUSIC

ELO is one oth those bands that you recognize within a few seconds, the vocals and wall of violins is so distinctive! I bought this album because I was mesmerized by the dark cover with that scary old fashioned looking electric chair. The first song sounds very promising featuring alternating, often bombastic symphonic rock with lots of good musical ideas but you can also notice ELO their pop sound. And that's my problem with Face The Music: almost every song has more or less its moments (interesting symphonic rock), I notice some fine clavinet in the hit single Evil Woman but mostly ELO leans too much towards pop: Jeff Lynne obviously influenced by The Beatles, the way Lennon and McCartney wrote their influential progressive pop songs. Nice effort, very tasteful and plesant music but a bit too superficial to keep my attention. A solid 2,5 stars.