Review Summary: "Discovery" killed the ELO star. Sometimes, you can't go back.
Following a rocky start, the Electric Light Orchestra had enjoyed tremendous commercial success during the 1970s. But by 1981, ELO leader, producer, guitarist, vocalist and sole songwriter Jeff Lynne faced a dilemma that confronted many established bands of this era: The high-gloss stadium rock of the previous decade was being challenged by an onslaught of punk and new wave acts that were playing less flashy, more dissonant music. Punk bands were playing guitars with as much anger and as few chords as they could spare, while a new generation of portable, reliable, low-cost synthesizers was spawning new wave groups that had adopted much of the punk attitude.
ELO also had to cope with the consequences of the "disco sucks" backlash that had begun about two years earlier. Disco influences had dominated the group's previous album
Discovery and its contributions to the
Xanadu film soundtrack, but disco had since dramatically declined in popularity. Although
Discovery had been a hit with the public in 1979, a disco-pop LP repeat in 1981 could have sunk like a stone off the pop charts.
As did many other aging acts that were threatened with extinction around this time, Lynne responded with a not-so-secret weapon: More cowbell... er, I mean keyboards. Despite its attempts to marry the heavy production of
Out of the Blue with up-to-date synthesizers as a sort of pop-rock concession to new wave,
Time more closely resembles the syrupy white bread found on
Discovery, just with the disco turned down slightly.
Time is a concept album, as is ELO's earlier breakthrough record
Eldorado. But in many respects,
Time is a sort of anti-
Eldorado, even down to the mirror image of its storyline. Whereas the earlier album's protagonist dreams of living in the past with Robin Hood and William Tell and Ivanhoe and Lancelot,
Time's lead character is caught in the future, time-transported from the 1980s into the late 21st century and enormously unhappy that he can't go home. While the
Eldorado storyline works well enough,
Time's tale of space age woe and cold-hearted robot babes is too cheesy for its own good. When our downtrodden time traveler oh-so-seriously bemoans his misfortune of having a ticket to the moon, it's just too ridiculous and far fetched to take his plight or this music seriously.
The album is also marred by the big drum sound that Lynne discovered on
Discovery and has beaten to death ever since. Sometimes it's fast ("Twilight", "Hold On Tight"), other times it's slow ("Ticket to the Moon", "Another Heart Breaks"), but whatever the tempo, it's invariably numbing and predictable. Combine that beat with some disco string riffs that appear throughout the album, and it becomes apparent that Lynne hasn't quite shaken his
Discovery bug. (For a time, ELO drummer and co-founder Bev Bevan would go on to play with Black Sabbath; after hearing this, one can't really fault him for wanting a change of pace.)
The most successful track here was not on the original LP. "When Time Stood Still" is a melancholy ballad with a distinctive bass line that was initially released as a B-side to "Hold On Tight" before eventually becoming a CD bonus track. Of all of the songs here, this one best represents Jeff Lynne's efforts to recapture his pre-disco glory days -- this would have fit quite nicely on
A New World Record.
In spite of its fixation on the year 2095,
Time spends far too much time in 1955. "The Way Life's Meant to Be", "The Lights Go Down," and the single "Hold On Tight" all anticipate much of Lynne's later material as a solo artist and with both ELO and the Traveling Wilburys. Loaded with vanilla textbook fifties riffs, Lynne's flirtations with the early days of rock 'n' roll are about as thrilling as a classic rock band dedicated to Archies and Monkees covers, yet Lynne seems to be unaware of how badly he mangles the heart and soul of that era of music.
Time also makes some unabashed efforts to ride the new wave. "Yours Truly 2095" and "Here is the News" strongly suggest that Jeff Lynne listened to "Video Killed the Radio Star" more than once, and Lynne does a fair job of borrowing from the Buggles' hit single of two years earlier. However, the effort to sound modern by relying on keyboards and English accents is one reason why this album does not work particularly well three decades later, for the bright, thin synthesizers that were in vogue at that time now sound charmless and horribly dated.
So
Time is far from timeless. Unlike
Eldorado,
Time is not an album that will endure throughout the ages, for it is so strongly defined by its old school computer shtick that it can never hope to be more than a mediocre period piece from an era of disposable synth pop. Not unlike
Time's main character, Jeff Lynne could not return to the good old days -- when the Buggles sang that "We can't rewind, we've gone too far", they could have been talking about ELO. Lynne would have even less luck with turning back the clock on the group's next release
Secret Messages.
Recommended tracks: "When Time Stood Still"
Author's note/ shameless plug: This is one part of my ongoing series of reviews of most of ELO's original studio releases. If you found this commentary to be somewhat informative, interesting, intriguing, intelligent, indefensible, insufferable, infuriating, incoherent, inane, incomprehensible or insulting, or if you just want to take pity on a guy who is masochistic enough to write these things, then please take a look at the other reviews and add your own thoughts. Thanks.
