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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Electric Light but no Orchestra,
By
This review is from: Balance Of Power (Audio CD)
I have already penned a review of this ELO album under its original cd release so as regards the musical merits my opinion is unchanged. Having decided to purchase this expanded edition as the bonus bits looked tempting I thought it useful to comment on the reissue contents.
Firstly the notes are informative and there are lots of pictures of single releases from the album but as with all the ELO reissues, no lyrics. The bonus tracks are quite appealing at first sight. At last the b-sides 'Caught in a trap' and 'Desitination unknown' make an appearance and fine tracks they are too. However, 'A matter of fact' the b-side of 'So Serious' is missing as is the 'ELO Megamix' which backed the 12" release of the excellent 'Getting to the point' single. Why ? Who decides when these things are prepared "OK folks, we are not going to include hese tracks". Are they being saved for a future release perhaps ? If so, that's a shame as with just over 56 minutes running time they could easily have been accommodated. The rest of the tracks are 'Opening/Heaven only knows(alternative version)'. A nice way of intro-ing to the albums first track, I am surprised this didn't make it to the album in the first place. Then comes an unreleased track 'In for the kill' but hey wait a minute, this is in actual fact 'Caught in a trap' with different words. Ha, shame on the record company for not making that clear ! Finally we get 'Secret lives' and 'Sorrow about to fall' in slightly different mixes which are neither better nor worse than the originals. All in all a tad disappointing and not in the same league as some of the other ELO reissues.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The End of the Line,
By
This review is from: Balance Of Power (Audio CD)
It's a strange album this. By his own admission, Jeff Lynnne's enthusiasm for ELO had waned greatly by this point, feeling himself constricted by the orchestral sounds that were the band's trademark. BoP was an attempt to escape from this and inject some new life into things.
By this stage, ELO was only really Lynne, Richard Tandy and Bev Bevan, so arrangements were very much more pared down. In hindsight of course, we know that things didn't really work and that Lynne went off to produce, while Bevan ended up in ELO II. Part of the reason this was the quality of the material, which wasn't as strong as some of ELO's earlier triumphs, while part was due to changing public mood. The world had moved on and ELO didn't really figure anymore. While not hitting their earlier heights, the basic album still has some extremely strong material on it, mostly in the opening half. Indeed, the first three songs, Heaven Only Knows, So Serious and Getting To The Point are all well crafted. The latter sounds as if it could have sat on 1979's Discovery while the first two are very strongly driven by rhythm. The only slight distraction is the chorus singing of So Seri-uss in the later. Calling America is, of course, very familiar to any ELO fan and the band's last major hit. The version of Endless Lies that made it to this album is actually less strong than the version that failed to make the cut on Secret Messages, where the Roy Orbison vibe Lynne was looking for seemed just that little bit better realised. The closer, Send It, is another nice straight up and down rock 'n' roll number, where the instrumentation makes it a novel treat and a fun listen. The expanded edition's extras are mostly a collection of alternative versions, mostly of some interest (the alternative vision of the album's opener Heaven Only Knows is particularly diverting). But the high points are In For The Kill, later to become the more polished Caught In A Trap (though I preferred the lyric in the former) and, for me at least, the high point of the whole album: the barnstorming, throbbing Destination Unknown. I can't really imagine why this was relegated to a B-side and didn't make the original album because this is simply fabulous and my principal reason for buying this expanded edition. In all, this is probably an album that the casual listener might regard with mild interest but little else, while many fans may want it for completeness. There are things to admire and appreciate, but less here to love than in the band's true heyday.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Remaster,
By Gortonandy (Manchester UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Balance Of Power (Audio CD)
The sound quality of this remaster is far superior to the original CD which I bought in 1986. So much so that the songs actually 'work' better and the album has an flow and continuity that I didn't notice before.
People always complain when an album gets too 'synthy' - yet even the so called rock albums these days are Pro Tooled up to the eyeballs. This is a very slick pop album by Jeff Lynne. Why should that be a bad thing?
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