TIME

Could ELO recover from the embarrassment of Discovery and Xanadu? I'm sure Jeff Lynne would disagree with me (as some die-hard ELO fans would) about those two dreadful albums being an embarrassment, but the answer to the question would be yes and no. Yes, because Time is a rather interesting concept album, with some of the freshest material Lynne had written since Eldorado. And the answer is also no, because the music is plainly still insipid even though they unloaded their "discoish" sound of 1979-1980. One aspect of their sound that changed significantly is a much lesser role of the trademark orchestra and a significant increase in the use of cheesy synthesizers. But that's a moot point, because again, none of the material on Time is progressive rock.

Most ELO fans will have you believe that this is one of the band's most underrated albums and I mostly agree with them on this. But that comment applies only to the pop music world because the music here is just that, pop music. Still, I think the production is high-class, the robot vocoder voices are cool in the beginning, and the concept is quite original, but that's as far as I'll go for the pluses of this release. For fans and collectors only, thus two stars. I would recommend starting with ELO II or On the Third Day if you're looking for progressive rock from this band.