FACE THE MUSIC

With their fifth album (actually their sixth if you count the double live album (The Night The Lights Went Out) released worldwide except in the UK and North America, Face the Music is the last step before the Spaceship era (the concerts were played from some fictitious flying saucer), but in every way did it pave the super-stardom to come with the following albums. With the previous album, we had seen original member Hugh Mc Dowell returning to the fold and his influences from Roy Wood's Wizzard is felt better through this time (Hugh is much more than a member of the string section) with the ever-increasing poppier feel of ELO.

This album spawned three monstrous hit: the hauntingly beautifully simple Strange Magic, the ultra commercial Evil Woman and Night Rider (called after Lynne's pre-Idle Race group days). The rest of the album is worthy ELO tracks but not that progressive anymore especially if you take away the string section's arrangements

Still a commendable album, but I will stop my string of ELO reviews with this album, for after, they really are of the pop realm, but they will for a long time remain truthful to the very typically ELO spirit developed in their early albums. Most haters said that they sold out completely, but by looking at their early discography and their later stuff , they fared much better than Genesis in terms of selling-out. Iam rounding the rating of this album to the upper star, because it is still worthy of ELO.