Just on the border of your waking mind there lies another time

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts.

06/09/81 : Time - ELO

Our fourth visit with ELO and so far I've liked their '70s offerings but found their '83 album to be very bland - so my expectations are somewhere in the middle.

Well, it's certainly not bland - I can see that some people might level accusations of "too same-y" at it because the tracks mostly share the same electro-prog-pop vibe (there are strong Jean-Michel Jarre vibes), but I think it gets away with it by having enough other stuff in there and it's certainly got a reasonable amount of skill involved. What I'm less sure about is whether I actually liked it - I don't think I did on first listen, but I can see I might get into it if I gave it a few chances (which I obviously won't) particularly because I recognised and liked "Hold On Tight". It was an interesting listen though which I was pleased to catch up with.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on their sixth week of a lengthy 32 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its fourth and fifth weeks - all surprisingly successful. The rest of the top five were Meat Loaf (a new entry), The Rolling Stones (another one), Gary Numan (and another!) and Cliff Richard (thankfully it's a compilation album so we get to swerve it) and the next highest new entry was Joan Armatrading (#13).

Wikipedia has more than I expected (144 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is their ninth album - interestingly, it's the only one that is credited to ELO as opposed to Electric Light Orchestra. It is (as I'm sure you realised) "a concept album about a man from the 1980s who is taken to the year 2095, where he is confronted by the dichotomy between technological advancement and a longing for past romance" - aren't we all, dahling?!? And boy does it go on about it in ridiculous detail (and no, I didn't read any of it). Critically, it's interesting because the contemporary reviews were very middling and a lot of fans didn't like the fact that they'd dropped their orchestral strings - but retrospectively the reviews are a lot kinder and various artists such as Flaming Lips and Daft Punk have expressed their appreciation of it. Commercially, it did very well globally, making the top five in a load of countries and getting to #1 in Germany, Spain and Sweden - it only got to #16 in the US, but still sold half a million copies over there.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version of this for £3.50 but if you want a decent Japanese reissue from '82 then it's going to set you back £81.30 - possibly a little more than I might spend on it. I'm not a huge ELO fan but I can understand the appeal of this to those who are - and plenty certainly were back in the day. 

13/09/81 - An interesting misstep

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I wanna keep the door from closing, yeah

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 26/12/25 : I Barely Know Her - Sombr Christmas week gives us some odd albums - last year we had Lana del Rey's album from '12, which hasn't left the chart all year. I'm pleased to say we're somewhat more up to date this year with an album that came out in August - I met it as a new entry  and was somewhat nonplussed by it, but I have mentioned it a couple of times since because it's just not gone away, which is somewhat unusual. So let's see what I make of it on a second listen (this trick totally failed to convince me of the virtues of Addison Rae earlier today). Well, well, well - Sombr at least intrigues on second listen. I'd struggle to describe it - it's kinda poppy indie with a woozy vibe to it, but it feels like it has depths to it and I reckon the more you listen to it, the more you pick up on. Intriguing indeed - I'd love to tell you more but that's all I got for the time ...
Read more

And all at once I owned the earth and sky

Image
A new year to start the New Year - starting my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 30/12/01 : Swing When You're Winning -   Robbie Williams There's a reasonable argument I should reject this album, but it was such a surprising cultural moment that even I don't feel I can, so it means we're starting the year with one that "we" own. This is our fifth visit with Mr Williams - I'm determined not to enjoy it, but I also have to admit I'm not going to hate it nearly as much as I would like to.  You know what? This is perfectly fine. Completely inessential, but he's not doing anyone any harm. For the most part, it's classic Sinatra-or-thereabouts tracks which Robbie does a decent job with on the vocals (along with some slightly peculiar guests) and they've obviously got some decent musicians in to lay down the backing tracks. He rarely does anything wildly original with them but, most importantly, he doesn't ruin them either - I don't...
Read more

In your grace, I looked for some meaning - but I found none

Image
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #3 :  Essex Honey - Blood Orange Dev Hynes’ fifth album as Blood Orange felt uniquely keyed into the fragmented, distracted headspace that comes after someone passes, in his case, his mother. Essex Honey’s restive nature was summed up in its painful opening lines, which you could read as the dying’s acceptance of death starkly contrasting the living’s ability to meet them on those terms: “In your grace, I looked for some meaning,” Hynes sings on Look at You. “But I found none, and I still search for a truth.” That search is wide-reaching: The Field refashions the Durutti Column’s Sing to Me as a racing hymnal made for the stereo of a Ford Escort. There are tough little Robert Rental-style post-punk gems in The Train (Kings Cross) and Countryside that bristle with frustration. Vivid Light is a plainly soulful duet with Zadie Smith; Life, featuring Tirzah’s unmistakable vocals, basks in languid, flute-dappled funk. T...
Read more