Electric Light Orchestra – ELO 2 Review

With Electric Light Orchestra still clinging to a sound which kept them in relevancy, ELO 2 is a surprising endeavour. With Roy Wood leaving to found Wizzard, a frontman-shaped hole was left behind. Jeff Lynne filled in and the rest is history. An almost immediate change in their sound and formation can be heard on ELO 2, a necessary change of pace to their debut effort. Wood was indeed the wrong man for the job when it came to Electric Light Orchestra and Lynne, along with Richard Tandy, found the sound they had been struggling to put together on stage. ELO 2 then is a miracle in action, a chance to hear what the band truly had to offer after what can be considered a bit of a dud start. It was not yet a clean break as ELO 2 still features bits from Wood, but the band had started their rebirth. 

Messy production aside, ELO 2 is decent fun. A very prog and loud album where the vocals struggle to stand out. These are moments to fine-tune and are ultimately fixed by the time their best works come through, though it makes pieces like In Old England Town sound underwhelming, and experimental in places where the operatic measures of E.L.O. take hold. An album full of teething issues for bandmates who were having to add extra demands to their already lengthy list of responsibilities. The result is a same-y sounding album where its songs struggle to sound all too inspired. Instead, the result is a muffled and compressed vocal performance for its opening track and a tug-of-war between Lynne and the instrumentals. The latter should be the winner but it, along with the rest of the tracks through ELO 2, becomes increasingly repetitive.  

And yet it sounds much better on Momma, with the strings and range of instrumentals providing the Orchestra with their first great bit of work. Lynne works with a wonderful range of instruments at the core of this, and he begins to unpick the rather scattershot moments, providing a depth to these songs which the band simply were not ready for on their debut. Momma far outshines Roll Over Beethoven, though the latter is far more popular and the impact is impressive. It has just never shaken The Beatles effect, the high points of a Paul McCartney-penned piece. Instrumental glories are heard on these two tracks and dip once again for the excess of Wood’s work on From the Sun to the World. And yet Lynne salvages something warm and rather marvellous from it, with the orchestra hard at work turning this into a stunner of an experience.  

A pretty strong album from Electric Light Orchestra, though a little brief too. It is understandably short – although its forty-minute runtime would have you think otherwise. Five songs which felt too weighty in this form to make much use for the stage shows, which were already a disastrous occasion. But Lynne does well to consider what was working well for the band at the time, and how to amplify this unravels rather nicely for ELO 2, an album benefitting greatly from the stunning instrumental experiences held together by Tandy. He just about nails it and the result, ultimately, is a foot on the ladder for a deserving set of solid musicianship.