Also available in a 3-pack with A NEW WORLD RECORD and DISCOVERY.

Electric Light Orchestra: Jeff Lynne (vocals, guitar); Kelly Groucutt (vocals, bass); Richard Tandy (guitar, piano, Clavinet, Moog synthesizer); Mik Kaminsky (violin); Hugh McDowall, Melvyn Gale (cello); Bev Bevan (drums, percussion).

Electric Light Orchestra: Jeff Lynne (vocals, guitar); Kelly Groucutt (vocals, bass guitar); Richard Tandy (guitar, piano, Clavinet, Moog synthesizer); Mik Kaminsky (violin); Hugh McDowall, Melvin Gale (cello); Bev Bevan (drums, percussion, background vocals).

Recording information: The Record Plant, New York, New York; De Lane Lea Music, London, England (1975).

ELO was big enough by 1974 that some people actually suggested that ELDORADO featured Satanic backward-masking. Of course, the idea was ludicrous; but the band playfully responded by adding a backward message to "Fire on High," the opening instrumental on 1975's FACE THE MUSIC.

Besides "Fire on High," which was used as background music for countless television programs in the '70s, this album's eight lengthy tracks include two enormous hits, "Evil Woman" and the McCartneyesque ballad "Strange Magic." Decades later, these two tracks are still in constant rotation on classic-rock radio around the world. Those three songs defined the new sound of ELO. Gone were the elaborate, classically styled overtures, in favor of concise, ultra-melodic pop songs given lush, romantic orchestral arrangements with endlessly overdubbed harmony vocals. The next three ELO albums refine this aesthetic to commercial perfection, but this is where it starts. FACE THE MUSIC is the album that put ELO over the top.

Q (2/96, p.114) - 2 Stars - Average - "...ponderous commercial prog-rock..."