Out of the Blue (1977)


 

  1. Turn to Stone
  2. It's Over
  3. Sweet Talkin' Woman
  4. Across the Border
  5. Night in the City
  6. Starlight
  7. Jungle
  8. Believe Me Now
  9. Steppin' Out
  10.Standin' in the Rain
  11.Big Wheels
  12.Summer and Lightning
  13.Mr. Blue Sky
  14.Sweet is the Night
  15.The Whale
  16.Birmingham Blues
  17.Wild West Hero

 

At some point in the late '70s, it became inevitable: if you were a successful rock act, sooner or later you had to make your sprawling double album. And if you happened to front a band with “orchestra” in the name — one that was already leaning hard into concept, spectacle, and neon-glow instrumentation — then not only was the double album inevitable, it was practically a birthright.

Out of the Blue is Jeff Lynne’s magnum opus — or at least his most ambitious production. Released at the absolute peak of ELO’s popularity, it’s not just a double album, it’s a full-blown event. The original LP sleeve unfolded into a punch-out model of a spaceship (which matched the flying saucer theme of their stage show at the time), and during live performances, the band would “emerge” from said spaceship in a blaze of lights, lasers, and electronic pageantry. It was the late ‘70s. Of course they did.

And honestly, about half of this album makes a very convincing case for the whole oversized endeavor.

Side three alone — subtitled Concerto for a Rainy Day — is worth the price of admission. Lynne always had a thing for rain imagery, but here he turns it into a suite: four songs that loosely revolve around weather, melancholy, and emotional change. It’s the band’s most successful conceptual sequence, and it ends on what might be their finest hour: Mr. Blue Sky. The song is sunshine in musical form, equal parts Beatles homage and Lynne’s own orchestral pop craftsmanship at its peak. It’s hard to imagine a better finale to anything ELO ever did.

Elsewhere, there are other standouts: Turn to Stone is a frantic, tightly coiled opener that balances synths, strings, and pure pop energy; Sweet Talkin’ Woman is sleek, radio-friendly bliss; and Steppin’ Out is a ballad that deserved more attention than it ever got. These are sharp, catchy, meticulously arranged songs that prove Lynne could write and produce radio gold in his sleep.

But it’s also true that the album starts to feel heavy around the edges. There’s a fine line between experimentation and indulgence, and Lynne occasionally loses sight of it. Jungle, for example, is more entertaining as an idea than an actual song — a bizarre mashup of animal sounds, disco strings, and a rhythm track that sounds like it wandered out of Saturday Night Fever. It’s fun once. Maybe twice.Wild West Hero is another eyebrow-raiser — essentially a full orchestral cowboy ballad that’s either charming or cringeworthy, depending on your tolerance for dramatic flair and genre-blending. Night in the City does better but still veers close to overkill. And then there’s The Whale, a moody instrumental that plays like background music to a nature documentary — which, let’s face it, is probably what it was always meant to be.

The truth is, if you trimmed the fat, this could’ve been a phenomenal single album. But the era demanded more. More packaging, more spectacle, more strings. And Lynne delivered — for better and worse.

Still, taken as a whole, Out of the Blue is impressive. It may be bloated, but it's rarely boring. And unlike many double albums of the era, it holds together with a sense of identity. Even when it strays, it never loses its voice. If you're spinning this on CD (and yes, it all fits comfortably on one disc), it's easier to forgive the detours. Think of it not as a double album weighed down by ambition, but as a great record with a little bonus material thrown in — some of it glorious, some of it odd, all of it unmistakably ELO.

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