Sven
07-11-2009, 05:54 PM
For Russ, I told you I'd do it:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/iosos/album%20art/eldorado-1.jpg
It is no secret to most who have spoken about music with me that I will punch anyone who says that they like Electric Light Orchestra more than I do. If there is such a thing in my life as hero-worship, or even just the idea of having a hero, I willingly prostrate myself at the feet of Jeff Lynne, ELO's brainchild and one of the greatest producer's in pop music. Not even the other two big bands of my youth, Steely Dan and Led Zeppelin, boasted such a singular artistic vantage. Fagen&Becker, for all their wry complexities, nowhere near equal Lynne's ebullience, and Plant&Page&Bonham&Jones, while undoubtedly virtuosos of a practically divine ilk, rarely achieved the kind of euphoric mania inspired by Lynne's propensity for boogie-centric experimentation.
We come, then, to Eldorado, undoubtedly the most integral cornerstone album of Lynne's career. It is a fine, fine album, full of sadness and dreams, injecting cathartic frills and an inspired energy into the dour subject of the narrative's hero's descent into a state of mental insubstantiality. The album's title and cover are the first clues to the angle of Lynne's approach: El Dorado, the mystical city of gold, and Oz, of Dorothy's dream, are used as reference points, indicating the progression of yearnings and fantasies illustrated both lyrically and musically in each song. It is significant that the still in the cover represents the moment in The Wizard of Oz in which the witch is unable to remove Dorothy's inherited safeguard (and finally "key to the eternal dream," only Lynne, in the end, subverts this). Like the England of Arthurian legend, which the record evokes a few times, the music on this album is both historically sound and fantastically embellished, telling of stories both original and recycled, woven together with nary a seam.
I've frequently had trouble with this album, feeling like it somehow rested on this uncomfortable crag between the chamber sound of the first three ELO albums and the disco sound that really gets rolling with their next album, Face the Music. From the beginning, ELO has demonstrated a fascination with classical music, early rock 'n roll, and the pop structures of the time (this time being 1974). Somehow the ponderous art rock sensibilities that permeated their first albums are in a state of transition, in Eldorado, on their way towards a more comfortable, radio-friendly form of single construction. None of these songs are particularly successfully autonomous, compared with the stand-alone peaks of Face the Music. Initially, I took this as a slight to the albums overall effectiveness--I did not see how the wobbly horns and staccato rhythms of Boy Blue the ominous musical theatricality of Nobody's Child related to each other, even though the latter song quotes the former. However, a more peering inspection of this seemingly precipitate roster of songs exposes a vision that is shockingly coherent by ELO standards.
The album begins in a dream. Lynne's incorporation of a live 30-piece orchestra is rewarded in spades. The dense, whirling sound evokes classic cinematic fantasy, a norm that, being instantly recognizable, gives the listener a rush of disassociated reality that is recalled on the latter half of the album with the help of similarly familiar strains: the repeated "painted lady" refrains in Nobody's Child resembling the thrusting rhythms of many a red light district tune, the Chuck Barry-esque rock of Illusions in G Major, and the surprising quoting of The Beatles' Across the Universe in Mister Kingdom. Of course, quoting is Lynne's modus operandi and is his thesis in Eldorado: this constant cribbing of relics of popular consciousness is worked into the story of a bank clerk whose life, being drudgery, is one escape after another into dreams of varying intensity and meaning.
The album's only real single is the somewhat obnoxious Can't Get It Out of My Head, which is perhaps a little too successful as a tune that, upon hearing it, one is unable to get out of one's head. Lyrically, it's a beautiful depiction of the refusal of a stubborn subconsciousness to let go of that which one cannot obtain. And the production shakes things up a bit, with a variety of sounds and layers that ebb and flow in the mix. The tone is nice, and it's a fine introductory song. What's better, though, is the beginning of the next track, Boy Blue, the album's greatest artistic success. As a corollary to the immense Flaming Lips track The Gash, it tells the story of a hero renouncing that which made him a hero. The irony of the chorus (a simple repeat of the phrase "Hey, Boy Blue is back") and the upbeat music, which shows real inventiveness with its slide guitar-violin duet and the various fanfares which open the song, accentuate the humane bittersweetness of triumph in battle. The song perfectly segues into the groovy, wailing Laredo Tornado, which utilizes a funky keyboard riff and a mess of swirling orchestrations to abstract affect, accompanying quizzically Native American themed lyrics. There are a number of cries in the composition, including a chorus of voices resembling wolf howls as well as a synthesized theremin screech. This is probably the most compelling and curious track on the album.
Following that is a Robin Hood story, Poor Boy (The Greenwood), which is energetic and optimistic. Remembering that all of these fantastical visions of war, buffaloes, and Maid Marion are the willing delusions of a bank clerk, the fullness of the mix becomes a proxy for a dreamlike ether, which is, in my opinion, the height of expressive sonic art. To, through just coordinated changes in pitch tone, evoke a universe of intangible longings is alchemy in practice. That Lynne's lyrics are particularly adroit this time around is only icing on the cake. Applying semantic meaning to tones is always a dangerous business, but with songs, particularly those of an experimental or expressive bent, it becomes an imperative, and that's what makes pop music profound.
The next song, Mister Kingdom, takes the well-established depth of Across the Universe and transforms it into a plea to a Higher Power, a "Mister Kingdom" in charge of the imaginary realms of The Clerk (an intriguing twist on "nothing's gonna change my world"). The album's ultimate mutual likening of obsessions of dreams and death rears its frightening head for the first time in this song. "Daylight comes to those who live/But those who die they never see the sun come/Shining through their window pane they pass away." Such a daunting sentiment will not be found in subsequent ELO albums.
Nobody's Child is The Clerk's only sexual fantasy, illustrating that uncanny confusion between desire and fear. Illusions in G Major may be my favorite song on the album. The classic rock tempo conveys the intensity with which The Clerk is desperately attempting to convince his mostly-likely-mandated shrink of the obligation he feels to his dreams. It ends with him imploring the doctor to help make his fantasies an actuality. Acknowledging this, the penultimate, eponymous track's sorrow is practically palpable. In assuming that the doctor has responded to The Clerk's urgings with corrective treatment, his soft-spoken declarations read as a tacit lament that he will remain in a stale waking state forever. The echoing of eternal sentiments give the monologue a cosmic portent, unavoidably eliciting a morbid focus. "Sitting here on top of everywhere, what do I care/days never end, I know the voyage's end will soon be here/no eternal life is here for me/and now I found the key to the eternal dream." If that doesn't sound like a jumper, call me crazy. The album finishes the way it began, with a reprise of the Eldorado Overture. Only this time, the rapid orchestral declensions sound less like an escape into fantasy and more like the sound of a determined body falling to the ground. The album ends with a final ominous chord and the voice from the first track repeating the lines: "The dreamer, the unwoken fool, high on a hill in Eldorado." And as Dorothy uses her key to return to reality, The Clerk uses his to return to Oz forever.
This dreamer-depression-suicide model is my own interpretation. I wouldn't object to those who think that it is perhaps a bit more malevolent than was intended by Lynne (who, for all I can tell, intended the album fairly straightforwardly and that the closing reprise is simply The Clerk's escape back into his dream). But the polyvalent characteristics of the music, ever-swinging between moods, anachronisms, and delusions, paints a picture of a wild, over-saturated mind. Quoting everything from Cohen to Keats, Browning to Mother Goose, Lynne imbues his compositions with an unmistakeably edgy energy. It is rash, unpredictable, indulgent, and I hereby withdraw any step I've ever taken to indicate anything but a passionate affection for this album. As a formal work of pop music, combining style with form, text with timbre, few concept albums compare. Ironically, its headiness is precisely what keeps it from being a favorite ELO album. A New World Record and Out of the Blue contain songs of a joyous, optimistic nature, which is definitely more suited to my fancy than heady suicide treatises. But Lynne's pop expertise takes the subject and makes it a fascinating and priceless experience.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/iosos/album%20art/eldorado-1.jpg
It is no secret to most who have spoken about music with me that I will punch anyone who says that they like Electric Light Orchestra more than I do. If there is such a thing in my life as hero-worship, or even just the idea of having a hero, I willingly prostrate myself at the feet of Jeff Lynne, ELO's brainchild and one of the greatest producer's in pop music. Not even the other two big bands of my youth, Steely Dan and Led Zeppelin, boasted such a singular artistic vantage. Fagen&Becker, for all their wry complexities, nowhere near equal Lynne's ebullience, and Plant&Page&Bonham&Jones, while undoubtedly virtuosos of a practically divine ilk, rarely achieved the kind of euphoric mania inspired by Lynne's propensity for boogie-centric experimentation.
We come, then, to Eldorado, undoubtedly the most integral cornerstone album of Lynne's career. It is a fine, fine album, full of sadness and dreams, injecting cathartic frills and an inspired energy into the dour subject of the narrative's hero's descent into a state of mental insubstantiality. The album's title and cover are the first clues to the angle of Lynne's approach: El Dorado, the mystical city of gold, and Oz, of Dorothy's dream, are used as reference points, indicating the progression of yearnings and fantasies illustrated both lyrically and musically in each song. It is significant that the still in the cover represents the moment in The Wizard of Oz in which the witch is unable to remove Dorothy's inherited safeguard (and finally "key to the eternal dream," only Lynne, in the end, subverts this). Like the England of Arthurian legend, which the record evokes a few times, the music on this album is both historically sound and fantastically embellished, telling of stories both original and recycled, woven together with nary a seam.
I've frequently had trouble with this album, feeling like it somehow rested on this uncomfortable crag between the chamber sound of the first three ELO albums and the disco sound that really gets rolling with their next album, Face the Music. From the beginning, ELO has demonstrated a fascination with classical music, early rock 'n roll, and the pop structures of the time (this time being 1974). Somehow the ponderous art rock sensibilities that permeated their first albums are in a state of transition, in Eldorado, on their way towards a more comfortable, radio-friendly form of single construction. None of these songs are particularly successfully autonomous, compared with the stand-alone peaks of Face the Music. Initially, I took this as a slight to the albums overall effectiveness--I did not see how the wobbly horns and staccato rhythms of Boy Blue the ominous musical theatricality of Nobody's Child related to each other, even though the latter song quotes the former. However, a more peering inspection of this seemingly precipitate roster of songs exposes a vision that is shockingly coherent by ELO standards.
The album begins in a dream. Lynne's incorporation of a live 30-piece orchestra is rewarded in spades. The dense, whirling sound evokes classic cinematic fantasy, a norm that, being instantly recognizable, gives the listener a rush of disassociated reality that is recalled on the latter half of the album with the help of similarly familiar strains: the repeated "painted lady" refrains in Nobody's Child resembling the thrusting rhythms of many a red light district tune, the Chuck Barry-esque rock of Illusions in G Major, and the surprising quoting of The Beatles' Across the Universe in Mister Kingdom. Of course, quoting is Lynne's modus operandi and is his thesis in Eldorado: this constant cribbing of relics of popular consciousness is worked into the story of a bank clerk whose life, being drudgery, is one escape after another into dreams of varying intensity and meaning.
The album's only real single is the somewhat obnoxious Can't Get It Out of My Head, which is perhaps a little too successful as a tune that, upon hearing it, one is unable to get out of one's head. Lyrically, it's a beautiful depiction of the refusal of a stubborn subconsciousness to let go of that which one cannot obtain. And the production shakes things up a bit, with a variety of sounds and layers that ebb and flow in the mix. The tone is nice, and it's a fine introductory song. What's better, though, is the beginning of the next track, Boy Blue, the album's greatest artistic success. As a corollary to the immense Flaming Lips track The Gash, it tells the story of a hero renouncing that which made him a hero. The irony of the chorus (a simple repeat of the phrase "Hey, Boy Blue is back") and the upbeat music, which shows real inventiveness with its slide guitar-violin duet and the various fanfares which open the song, accentuate the humane bittersweetness of triumph in battle. The song perfectly segues into the groovy, wailing Laredo Tornado, which utilizes a funky keyboard riff and a mess of swirling orchestrations to abstract affect, accompanying quizzically Native American themed lyrics. There are a number of cries in the composition, including a chorus of voices resembling wolf howls as well as a synthesized theremin screech. This is probably the most compelling and curious track on the album.
Following that is a Robin Hood story, Poor Boy (The Greenwood), which is energetic and optimistic. Remembering that all of these fantastical visions of war, buffaloes, and Maid Marion are the willing delusions of a bank clerk, the fullness of the mix becomes a proxy for a dreamlike ether, which is, in my opinion, the height of expressive sonic art. To, through just coordinated changes in pitch tone, evoke a universe of intangible longings is alchemy in practice. That Lynne's lyrics are particularly adroit this time around is only icing on the cake. Applying semantic meaning to tones is always a dangerous business, but with songs, particularly those of an experimental or expressive bent, it becomes an imperative, and that's what makes pop music profound.
The next song, Mister Kingdom, takes the well-established depth of Across the Universe and transforms it into a plea to a Higher Power, a "Mister Kingdom" in charge of the imaginary realms of The Clerk (an intriguing twist on "nothing's gonna change my world"). The album's ultimate mutual likening of obsessions of dreams and death rears its frightening head for the first time in this song. "Daylight comes to those who live/But those who die they never see the sun come/Shining through their window pane they pass away." Such a daunting sentiment will not be found in subsequent ELO albums.
Nobody's Child is The Clerk's only sexual fantasy, illustrating that uncanny confusion between desire and fear. Illusions in G Major may be my favorite song on the album. The classic rock tempo conveys the intensity with which The Clerk is desperately attempting to convince his mostly-likely-mandated shrink of the obligation he feels to his dreams. It ends with him imploring the doctor to help make his fantasies an actuality. Acknowledging this, the penultimate, eponymous track's sorrow is practically palpable. In assuming that the doctor has responded to The Clerk's urgings with corrective treatment, his soft-spoken declarations read as a tacit lament that he will remain in a stale waking state forever. The echoing of eternal sentiments give the monologue a cosmic portent, unavoidably eliciting a morbid focus. "Sitting here on top of everywhere, what do I care/days never end, I know the voyage's end will soon be here/no eternal life is here for me/and now I found the key to the eternal dream." If that doesn't sound like a jumper, call me crazy. The album finishes the way it began, with a reprise of the Eldorado Overture. Only this time, the rapid orchestral declensions sound less like an escape into fantasy and more like the sound of a determined body falling to the ground. The album ends with a final ominous chord and the voice from the first track repeating the lines: "The dreamer, the unwoken fool, high on a hill in Eldorado." And as Dorothy uses her key to return to reality, The Clerk uses his to return to Oz forever.
This dreamer-depression-suicide model is my own interpretation. I wouldn't object to those who think that it is perhaps a bit more malevolent than was intended by Lynne (who, for all I can tell, intended the album fairly straightforwardly and that the closing reprise is simply The Clerk's escape back into his dream). But the polyvalent characteristics of the music, ever-swinging between moods, anachronisms, and delusions, paints a picture of a wild, over-saturated mind. Quoting everything from Cohen to Keats, Browning to Mother Goose, Lynne imbues his compositions with an unmistakeably edgy energy. It is rash, unpredictable, indulgent, and I hereby withdraw any step I've ever taken to indicate anything but a passionate affection for this album. As a formal work of pop music, combining style with form, text with timbre, few concept albums compare. Ironically, its headiness is precisely what keeps it from being a favorite ELO album. A New World Record and Out of the Blue contain songs of a joyous, optimistic nature, which is definitely more suited to my fancy than heady suicide treatises. But Lynne's pop expertise takes the subject and makes it a fascinating and priceless experience.