ELDORADO

The best of their smooth AOR period, which began with the previous album (On the Third Day) and never let up, Eldorado is a very listenable and accessible, yet still progressive, concept album. They must have felt some pressure to live up to the expectations set by their name and use of strings, and so wrote a musically-intricate long suite that weaves together themes very nicely. But don't misunderstand - this album shares the same smooth highly-produced AOR sound as those albums that would follow. It thus has more in common sonically and musically with Face the Music, and Out of the Blue, than with ELO I or ELO II, despite its deliberate progressive concept. It begins and ends with the brief Eldorado overture, a great piece of music and one that immediately marks this as touch more serious that your typical commercial album. In between are a number of short songs, yet most of these segue together to form a continuous listening experience. These include the hit single "Can't Get It Out of My Head", as well as similarly accessible songs like "Boy Blue" and "Poor Boy". The song "Eldorado" is one of the best here. I personally wish they had included more of the instrumentals. The CD edition I have includes a 7-minute extended instrumental Eldorado medley, and a short instrumental "Dark City", both of which are better than anything released on the actual album (!) These instrumentals would have been great to include in the actual album on first release. But I guess the band or record company really wanted to make sure more commercial audiences and radio corporations were not turned off, and so left those off the original release. But regardless, I still think it (the original album) is up there among ELO's better albums. It is the best of their post-1972 commercial period, and the third-best overall (after ELO I and ELO II). I give this ablum 7.5 out of 10 on my 10-point scale, which translates to 3 PA stars.

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