ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA [AKA: NO ANSWER]

The first Electric Light Orchestra album - and the only to include Roy Wood - is positively dripping with Beatles mimicry. This is hardly surprising - the declared aim of the band was to pick up where the Beatles left off - but it does mean that the group hadn't yet developed its own characteristic sound at this point, and a lot of the time when listening to it I think to myself "this is alright... but I'd rather listen to the Beatles' version".

The album consists of three different types of tracks. The first, and easily the best, are songs in which the entire band pitches in and the classical and rock elements mingle in together, to yield the seeds of what would become the band's classic-era approach. This is apparent on songs like the 10538 Overture, Mr Radio, and a few others. The second are songs which are given over to classical instrumentation almost entirely, such as the Battle of Marston Moor, which manages to be neither an interesting piece of classical music nor a decent attempt at symphonic rock (well, there's barely any rock element to it).

The third are songs which simply mimic the approach of a Beatles song so closely that if you're at all aware of the Beatles' music you will most likely find the attempts here to be tired- out, cliched rip-offs. (And if you're not familiar with the Beatles, then you really ought to be exploring their music before getting around to ELO because overall they exist on a far higher tier.) The worst song in this regard is Look At Me Now, a song so similar to Eleanor Rigby in instrumentation, composition and delivery that you're left wondering why they didn't just do an Eleanor Rigby cover and leave it at that.

Ultimately, the first album has a few good songs, but also a lot of experiments which doubtless seemed like a good idea at the time but simply don't work, at least not this time around. Fortunately, later releases by the band would build on the promise of the clutch of high-quality tracks on offer here, leading to a sound which perhaps is less diverse, but was arguably more competently performed. As for this album, I'd only look into it if you're really keen to see how the band started out.