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Electric Light Orchestra
I must have some nerve thinking that I can review any album by the Electric Light Orchestra – especially this album. Somehow, against all odds, I managed to ignore this band when they were in their prime, and “A New World Record” certainly represents E.L.O. at their height of fame.
Considering that their prime coincided with my own high school years, that was not an easy thing to do, but it is dubiously impressive. Back then, key tracks from this album were played incessantly on the radio, and most kids my age accepted the band without any hesitation. I didn’t. I thought of them as fatuous, overtly commercial and derivative copycats. In retrospect, it’s hard for me to understand my nasty, or at best indifferent, perspective.
My own youthful limitations certainly had something to do with it; E.L.O. weren’t as cool or hard as Led Zeppelin, their musicianship wasn’t as intuitive as the Allman Brothers, and their arrangements were less intriguing than Yes. They were completely different, but they were caught on the same stylistic middle ground as Elton John, and in 1977, that wasn’t a particularly cool place to be.
So, naturally my aged prejudice now informs my present opinion. As I listen to this thirty year-old album today, it sounds like I should have liked it then, so what gives? For starters, my tastes in music have changed dramatically since 1976, so I can finally hear what my peers heard when we were teenagers. I was ill-equipped to admit it then, but “A New World Record” is consistently good throughout. The album’s equalization still sounds oddly flat, like somebody lopped off the high end, but the music holds up in ways that I never would have imagined. “Telephone Line” is artfully written ands tastefully arranged. The string arrangements that once struck me as grandiose and pompous now sound quaint and simple. “Do Ya” still sounds like a rock and roll composite of one thousand other bands, but nobody else could have combined so many ingredients as skillfully as Jeff Lynne does here. “Livin’ Thing” impressed me even then (‘tho I never admitted it), and its combination of schmaltzy pseudo-classical references with "wise-guy doo-wop" is much more original than I originally considered it to be.
Will a new audience reap the same benefits as me? I doubt it. This album will offer little to today’s high school crowd, but if you remember the bicentennial and graduated while wearing Earth shoes, you may owe it to yourself to pick up a new copy of E.L.O.’s “New World Record.”
Grade: 
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