It's easy to forget that prog wasn't always uncool. For a while, people actually bought it, and its aspirations of being the beginning of music, or the end of music, or both, or something, seemed almost reasonable. So complex! So intricate! So bold! This album sums up both sides, showing why prog was popular and why it shouldn't have been in turn and all at once. Alternately accessible and pompous, alternately thrilling and overdone, it's a trip to be sure.
If you had to pick a song, Tank sums it up best, opening with relentless, overcomplex metal, wandering off into indulgent, sparse drum solos and then really, actually, kind of rocking really goddamn hard, as gorgeous, buzzy synths build and build and soar. All in a downright restrained 7 minutes!
Unlike so much prog that seemed to aspire to be "the new classical music", or that set out in search of folk's timelessness via bloated narrative, ELP worship at the altar of jazz. Lines whirl in and out and around like sparrows, Keith Emerson's keyboards at the eye of the storm, whipping endlessly. I guess you can't make an ELP LP without LP, but this is decidedly the E show, and the spastic keyboard melodies are as essential to this sound as Jethro Tull's flute, whether in staccato piano or richly portamento'd synth form (the latter's more fun).
Also give credit for the beautiful, heartbreaking final song that sounds lush enough to be a great lost, miscategorized ELO song; a closing argument that's enough to knock you off the whole accessible / pompous debate at the last second. But no. I'm staying strong. Pompous! But still good! It's a wicked weird album, and a sadder, jazzier, arguably more important album than their more famous ones, say, maybe, the ones featuring creepy Giger art or a robotic armadillo (really!) on the cover. These dudes were all kinds of strange. 4/5
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