Electric Light Orchestra

Secret Messages (1983)

 

  1. Secret Messages
  2. Loser Gone Wild
  3. Bluebird
  4. Take Me On and On
  5. Time After Time
  6. Four Little Diamonds
  7. Stranger
  8. Danger Ahead
  9. Letter From Spain
  10.Train of Gold
  11. Rock & Roll is King
  
  
  

By the time Secret Messages emerged, whatever remained of the “orchestra” in Electric Light Orchestra was a matter of branding rather than sound. Curiously, the band had reverted to using their full name, but the lush string arrangements and baroque flourishes that once defined them were long gone. The futurist concept had been played out on Time, and one suspects that Jeff Lynne, for all his compositional gifts, found himself staring down the uncomfortable question: what now?

As it turned out, not much. Secret Messages is less a bold new direction than the sound of creative inertia. Lynne later confessed that the joy had left the project — and that sentiment bleeds into nearly every track. Though the album bears the ELO name, it is, in essence, a Jeff Lynne solo record — albeit one that lacks the vitality or invention of his best work. The result is an LP that feels like a contractual obligation, and sounds like one too.

Ironically, there was no shortage of material. Lynne had envisioned the album as a double LP, only to have the label demand a pared-down version. The discarded tracks, some of which later surfaced in dribs and drabs, did little to suggest a lost masterpiece. And perhaps most tellingly, the song that Lynne initially hyped — the oddly titled "Beatles Forever" — didn’t even make the final cut. (A lo-fi demo now circulates online, for the curious or the masochistic.)Yeah. It was bad.

The album’s commercial reception matched its musical stagnation. For the first time in a decade, ELO failed to place a single in the Top 10. Rock ’n’ Roll Is King, ostensibly the lead single, tries gamely to recapture the fizz of earlier hits, but the result is disappointingly thin — spirited but disposable. Four Little Diamonds fares slightly better, but lacks the bite or brilliance of earlier fare.

The album’s highlights are few but noteworthy. The title track, a cheeky rejoinder to accusations of subliminal satanic messaging, brims with sly energy. Bluebird, a genuinely tuneful and radio-friendly number, could easily have been a hit under different circumstances — or, indeed, in a different decade.

Beyond these, the album meanders. The tracks aren’t bad so much as indistinct, drifting by without ever quite catching hold. By 1983, the musical landscape had shifted. Tastes had changed, and the once trailblazing ELO found itself out of step — a relic of an earlier, more symphonic moment in pop. Secret Messages was, in many ways, exactly that: a message from a band whose time had passed.

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