Even ELO must have felt out of ideas circa Discovery (see previous review), because on their next one they went for it and made something thrilling and beautiful and strange. This is ELO with a harder electronic tack, a more overtly futuristic set of themes, a real sense of unease from a century away, an actual spark through the backbone.
Grandaddy cites this as a reference for The Sophtware Slump and that shows all right - if you inspired an album about the terrifying present via a 20-years-previous album about the terrifying future, you're doing something right. Shades of Flight of the Knife here too, while we're on the subject. Yours Truly, 2095, in particular, is a revelation - that swooping structure, that blippity backline, those off-center verses, that chillingly welcoming/alienating storyline.
Unfortunately, the album's also ferociously front-loaded, with the backside dropping much of what made those first four or so tracks so exciting, but it still all works, because those songs are so good, because they set the stage to give every more-standard ELO song that follows an uncanny tilt, a slowly lilting rocket to nowhere 4/5
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