Stream of Consciousness & Music Reviews

      This is gonna be a hard album to discuss because of how bizarre it is. Every aspect of the music is just so weird, and I'm having trouble coming up with any other way to describe it. Every individual part feels like it was made without consideration for how it would work with every other part and yet it all somehow comes together to create really good and surprisingly funky songs. The production is great on this album, and you know that it's something special if I actually mention the quality of the sound. The more traditional instruments, especially main guitar, have some sort of filter over it or something similar that gives it a very unique timbre that I can't quite nail down but that I really like. It's almost like it's being played through some form of older recording equipment to give it a very technologic and nearly artificial sound, which plays really nicely with the more artistic instruments (bongos, horns) that are left mostly unaltered. Combine that...

      Balance of Power was the original final album that ELO recorded under their recording contract (before regrouping multiple times in the future, I'm getting to those too) and this is a real let down. If Secret Messages dipped it's toes into 80s sound and tropes, Balance of Power has leaped off the high dive. Every song just sounds generically 80s, especially when it comes to synths, which just seem to have that generic 80s synth timbre that's in every glamrock hit from the era. As a result of this pretty much every track sounds samey, which isn't helped that ELO don't really do this sound very well. I think that I liked Secret Messages as much as I did because it was restrained in how much it let itself be influenced by then modern trends and was able to use those elements to enhance a strong musical foundation; Balance of Power tries going all in on it, and it kind of fails. There some tracks or sections of songs that are creative with the tropes it takes ...