SECRET MESSAGES

I remember Secret Messages being one of my first purchases on vinyl back when Columbia House was offering five records for a penny and then you had to buy one or two records at regular price for the year. But let's get one thing out the way right from the start. Just like every ELO album released from 1976 onward, there isn't an ounce of progressive rock on this interesting work. It's pop rock loaded with lots of synthesizers, but it's on par with some of the best pop rock the band had ever recorded, although the lyrics are clearly a cheese festival with swiss cheese holes distorting the local spacetime continuum.

Secret Messages was named after a controversy that followed ELO's career starting with their Eldorado album in which they were accused of recording Satanic messages backwards. Although these messages never actually existed, ELO mocked the controversy by recording backwards messages on Fire on High from their Face the Music album. As far as I know, they never again recorded backwards messages until Secret Messages, which has backwards messages in the beginning and ending of the album and in some small parts in individual songs. They also played Morse code using keyboards on the title track spelling out the album's name.

Another curiosity about Secret Messages is that Lynne had intended it to be a double record release, but the record company disapproved. So a lot of the extra material was released as B-sides and later on the Afterglow boxset. And that's a shame as some of this extra material was even better than what made it onto the actual album. One song in particular, Hello My Old Friend, was sort of like the Beatles meet neo prog.

Anyway, all that trivia aside, this is a great, if underrated pop album of the 1980's and the last interesting work of the band. However, since there isn't any progressive rock on it, I can only recommend to fans and collectors only, thus only two stars. Still, if you're interested in synthesizer-laced, but tasteful 1980's pop rock and can bear cheesy lyrics, you might want to take the time to seek this one out. Otherwise, go with something from their first three studio releases.

Secret Messages was almost the end for Jeff Lynne and ELO. There would be one more album (Balance of Power) a few years later, but I'm not really sure why. By this point Lynne was simply punching a ticket to fulfill record company contracts. Long gone are the lush and exciting cello/violin string arrangements, as well as most of the other non- synthesized instrumentation. Also gone is any semblance of creative expression in the music.

Lynne always had a knack for churning out assembly-line, by-the-numbers tunes, but usually reserved such tripe for movie soundtracks (Xanadu, Electric Dreams, Shanghai Surprise), or for his ultra-cheesy solo dance albums (Doin' that Crazy Thing, Every Little Thing). With this album he no longer kept up a facade of separating the band from his own fad-conscious sensibilities. The result is an incredibly boring and lifeless album, and one which features virtually no actual musical instruments on several songs, Lynne relying instead on DMX drum tracks, synthetic keyboards of all varieties, and something called a Bottronix (whatever!). There are a couple tracks with uncredited strings, but frankly it's hard to tell if even these are real given the heavy amount of studio remixing, overdubs, and other wizardy Lynne had by then become so adept at. Mik Kaminski does make an appearance with his violin for the last song ("Rock and Roll is King"), but this is such an obvious and trite attempt at a radio hit that even Kamisnki can't save it.

There's really not much point in walking through this track-by-track, since most of them are uniformly bland and lifeless. A couple of small highlights will do:

"Stranger" sounds like it's right out of Discovery, but without any real instruments except the voices, and even these are highly massaged. The rest of side A ("Loser Gone Wild", "Bluebird", and "Take Me on and On") are slow, highly-synthesized numbers that appear to have been recorded for the sole purpose of providing a middle-school roller-skating party with some slow music for the couples-only session.

Side B is quite frankly worse, primarily because Lynne appears to have decided to try and pass off some really low-grade Beatlesque music as something new ("Stranger", "Danger Ahead"). The next two tracks aren't worth expanding on.

The album closes with "Rock and Roll is King", an upbeat, rocking number (hance the name), but like I said - an obvious attempt at a single (which I believe it was, in fact). Aside from a mildly interesting violin solo by Kaminski, the rest of this one sounds like a poor imitation of the highly-annoying 80s retro-band Stray Cats.

I'm as strong an apologist as anyone for Jeff Lynne, especially in the early part of his career where not everything the band tried was a success, but at least they tried. On Secret Messages the 'band', if you could even call it that by this point, was simply phoning this one in to satisfy a contract. Stay away, not even for collectors. One star.

peace

Another attempt to produce a "symphony" ?

Sounds so with the intro of the title track (as usual since "El Dorado"). Only with the intro. After forty-five seconds, we are back again in the pop / disco / synth ELO repertoire. Lots of poor stuff here. The worse is being reached with "Time After Time". It is a real pity. At least the ones who bought the vinyl album have escaped this track, but the lucky ones who purchased the CD version (not talking about the remastering one with three "bonus" tracks) had to suffer an additional four minutes of the poorest synth and uninspired music. Dreadful, really.

The first bearable track is "Four Little Diamonds". It is not a jewel of course, but at least it is a decent rock'n'roll song. A nice little rock break in an ocean of syrupous "music". "Stranger" is not too bad either : a nice melody like the master wrote an awful lot during all those years. The chorus is a bit childish, but compared to the other tracks, it is good to hear that Jeff's talent has not completely disappeared. I can also live with "Letter From Spain" which is a very smooth ballad.

"Rock & Roll Is King" is another bearable track. It is the closing number ... At least, when writing a rock'n'roll song, Jeff is still performant. He should have stuck more to this genre if the he couldn't find the inspiration for the fabulous melodies he used to write. At the very end of the song, the intro from the title shows up again (you know, like in "El Dorado"). But "El Dorado" was a masterpiece.

This album leaves me with the feeling of misery, really. Compleztely dull, almost all the way through. Gone the superb vocal harmonies, gone the wonderful melodies, gone the great string arrangements. What's left is just a boring record. An insult for this great songwriter that Jeff used to be.

At this point of time, I think it would have been wiser to call it quit for ELO, but they will still go on. Alas. This "record" will reach the fourth spot in the UK charts. Yes, number four, you are not dreaming. The best feature of this album is probably the cover artwork.

One star of course.

"I don't mind if violins don't play" (Loser gone wild)

The penultimate ELO album with Jeff Lynne until he repossessed the name in 2001, is very much a case of "Time" part 2. Indeed the title track which kicks off the album sounds very much like a discarded outtake from "Time", in terms of both the lyrics and the musical style. This was originally intended to be a double album, but the record company, probably wisely, vetoed the proposal. Some of the omitted tracks can be found on the re-mastered version of the CD.

If you regretted that ELO had surrendered to the lure of the pop pay-cheque on previous albums, you are going to be especially disappointed here. The contents make everything which came before seem positively complex and challenging. Every song here is a potential hit single, except that by this time the ELO bubble had burst. Their audience were tiring of the same verse/chorus pop songs which the band persisted in releasing as singles, becoming less and less receptive to continued requests for their hard earned cash. The "Orchestra" part of the band name is by now something of a misnomer, violin not even featuring in the line up. That said, Louis Clark arranged strings on three tracks, and Mik Kaminski returns for a violin solo on the last track. The album sold well nonetheless, but is largely forgotten in terms of their back catalogue.

The real problem here though is that the song writing is rather hit and miss. Jeff Lynne writes all the songs as usual, but it seems he has finally run out of inspiration, and is running on empty. Songs such as "Loser gone wild" and "Bluebird" are little more than facsimiles of facsimiles. They still have the strong Beatles influence which has always been an acknowledged feature of ELO's work, but they come across as little more than reworkings of previous ELO songs.

It would be wrong however to imply that the album is a complete disaster. Lynne is one of the masters of the three minute pop song. His production, the walls of sound, and the catchy melodies are all still here. Had this been the first album by ELO, it could have been a minor pop classic. The fact is though that it follows a string of such albums without ever breaking out of the well worn rut.

The album title by the way, is a reference to the accusations that ELO and other bands had included secret message in their albums. The sleeve here bears the notation "Warning: Contains secret backward messages".

ELO's Secret Messages is probably more interesting for its history than the actual music that was on it. Lynne admits that Secret Messages was just a fulfillment of contractual obligations with the record company, so really I guess he wasn't giving his full 100 percent. The record was originally planned to be a double album, but the record company indicated that it would have been too expensive (and besides, their sales appeal had been waning by 1983). I have to wonder if making a double album would have relieved Lynne of his contract, as he had to make one more album for them (Balance of Power in 1986). Anyway, he was left with six songs that would find their way onto B-sides and the Afterglow box set (released in 1990). The remaining material formed the Secret Messages album. Strangely enough, the songs that didn't make the album were often better than the album itself (e.g. Hello My Old Friend and Mandalay).

Although Lynne was only fulfilling a contract, the music he did create for this album really wasn't that bad for this time period in music history. In fact, many of the songs could still stand on their own years later as decent, nicely arranged pop rock, although the album did contain some filler. I would opine that Secret Messages was about on par with Time in quality, but sounded more polished and more "electric." The orchestra was completely missing on this album with only a guest appearance of Mik Kaminski on one song. Real strings were replaced by synthesizers (which was common for this time period). Thus it sounds sort of like a remodeled ELO and some might say a colder ELO because of the digitized sound, lacking the warmth of their traditional analogue instruments of the 1970s.

Secret Messages, as the title suggests, has scattered hidden messages throughout the record. These include backmasked messages and the album's name spelled out in Morse code at the beginning and end. This was Lynne's response to allegations that earlier ELO albums had hidden Satanic messages. This album would also see the dismissal of bassist Kelly Groucutt after it was completed. Groucutt later sued Lynne for lost royalties and settled out of court.

An interesting, yet inconsistent album. If Lynne had not been just fulfilling contractual obligations, I have to wonder where ELO would have been and how they would have sounded. Probably the same pop rock as before, but maybe better and higher quality material than what was released. Who knows? Definitely an interesting acquisition for ELO and Jeff Lynne fans. Since it lacks any real progressive rock, I can't go past two stars.

(The rating for this review is for the 35th anniversary double album released in 2018)

'Secret Messages' is the 10th album released by Electric Light Orchestra, and by this time, the band was pretty much all about Jeff Lynne that it was about a rock band founded on the idea of being a band that utilized classical instruments to create rock music. The orchestra part of the band was pretty much just happy background support, not unlike the brass section of another 'great band turned pop', Chicago. Yes, these bands were selling records at the time, but their identifying sound had become just secondary layers turning them both into just another commercial band.

The original version of this album really has nothing that stands out from any of ELO's previous work, in fact it just all seems like top 40 versions of rehashed material, and it is hard to find anything really memorable out of the ten tracks that make up the album. There are a couple of great tunes here like 'Four Little Diamonds' and 'Secret Messages' but they soon wear out their welcome as time passes.

However, in defense of this album, Lynne originally wanted it to be a double album much like 'Out of the Blue' was. He had enough tracks to make it that way, but CBS decided that a double album was too expensive to make and was less likely to sell a lot of copies. So, instead they released the stripped down version. In 2018, Lynne finally was able to release the album the way he wanted it, as a double album with all of the songs (except one) that were originally planned to be on the album and with the tracks in the order that he wanted them to be in the first place.

So, the question is, does this make the album any better? Actually, it does to a certain extent. The music that was left off is still more pop-oriented. There is no progressive music on the double album version either. However, a few of the tracks that were left off were better than some of the ones that were included in the original album. ELO lovers will definitely want to check them out.

The first four tracks take up side one of the anniversary edition in the same order as the original album, no changes there. Side two starts to see some differences as the next track is the strong track 'Stranger', and this is followed by the first 'new' track 'No Way Out' (which was previously available as a bonus track on the CD reissue) which is also one of the stronger tracks. At this point, the track 'Beatles Forever' was supposed to follow according to Lynne's original concept. This was the only track still left off of the Anniversary Edition. If you get a chance to hear a bootleg version of the track, you will understand why it has never been used, it's quite tacky and it uses many of The Beatles lyrics, they probably have a hard time getting clearance to use the lyrics, especially on something so embarrassingly awful. This side then finishes with the more lackluster tracks 'Letter from Spain' and 'Danger Ahead'.

Side Three begins with one of the highlights of the original album 'Four Little Diamonds' and then the side loses steam with 'Train of Gold'. Two previously unreleased tracks follow with 'Endless Lies' (appeared as a bonus track on the CD reissue) and 'Buildings Have Eyes' both of which are pretty much more of the same commercial fare, then ends with the hit from the album 'Rock n Roll is King'. Side Four begins with an okay, previously unreleased track 'Mandalay' followed by 'Time After Time' from the original release. After this is a shortened version of what was an instrumental sleeper 'After All', the full version of which was included on one of the past CD reissues, but not on the original album. It was a smart move to only leave a snippet of that track on here because it works better as a short introduction for the last track, which is also the previously unreleased 'Hello, My Old Friend'. This is the best track written for this album in Lynne's original concept. If the album was made up of tracks like this one, the album would have been much better. It's sad to think that it had been left in the unused bin for so long as it is the best track produced by ELO in their later years. Even though it is progressive lite, at least there is a small dose of progressive style to it.

Overall, the double album version is maybe only a half star better than the 'label's' version of the album. But for the avid fans of ELO's pop sound will definitely love this. I can only manage to give it 3 stars, and most of that is because of the last track. There is a little bit more variety to this version of the album too, which is something the original definitely lacked. So, if you are an avid fan (and I do know of some people that are), then you will definitely want to get this edition. Otherwise, if you are hoping for something that sounds like the older, unique sound of the band, then you will be disappointed. This is not one for those searching only for progressive music as there is nothing here for you unless you love pop, Roy Orbison and Beatles impressions and 50's nostalgia.