Electric Light Orchestra - Face The Music [Japan Ed.] (1975)

Year: 1 September 1975 (CD Sep 1, 1990)
Label: CBS / Sony Records (Japan), CSCS 6030
Style: Progressive Pop, Pop Rock
Country: Birmingham, England
Time: 33:45
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 220 Mb

The making of Electric Light Orchestra's Face The Music wasn't as straightforward as studio engineer Reinhold Mack would have liked, with band leader Jeff Lynne apparently a difficult man to do business with.
"Every morning, his attitude would be cold, as if I’d never met him before," said Mack, "walking straight past me without even saying hello."
Lynne’s inability to express himself manifested itself in the studio. His favourite question to Mack was: "Can you make it sound more weird?" without explaining what ‘weird’ was. Lynne’s approach to recording was to ‘carry’ the song around in his head and build it in the studio, while keeping everyone in the dark about details such as the melody, chorus or lyrics.
But still, Lynne finessed ELO’s usual hybrid of fiddly prog-rock and pop into something that made sense, with songs such as Strange Magic and Evil Woman suggesting that the way forward meant less of the former and more of the latter.
Released in autumn 1975, Face The Music was a US hit, but missed the British chart. But there was hope: Evil Woman, a song initially dismissed as filler by Jeff Lynne, gave ELO their first domestic top ten hit in three years, and set them up nicely for the next album, A New World Record.
Here was a song that used everything Jeff Lynne learned from dissecting other people’s records, but given the ELO spin. Evil Woman’s piano intro briefly echoed Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill; the strings could have come off a Philly soul hit; the line ‘There’s a hole in my head where the rain comes in’ was a tribute to The Beatles’ Fixin’ A Hole; and there was even a hint of disco in the rhythm. Evil Woman was a perfect pop record.
"And the fastest song I ever wrote," said Lynne, who composed it in just six minutes.
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
(loudersound.com/reviews/electric-light-orchestra-face-the-music-album-of-the-week-club-review)

01. Fire On High (04:02)
02. Waterfall (03:53)
03. Evil Woman (04:13)
04. Nightrider (04:24)
05. Poker (03:31)
06. Strange Music (04:08)
07. Down Home Town (03:44)
08. One Summer Dream (05:46)

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