ELO has been largely dormant since they released their thirteenth album in 2001. And yet, their music continues to find new listeners, whether through compilations, car commercials, soundtrack placements, or G+ copies of Eldorado in used record bins. On one hand, the band ought to have aged about as well as Emerson Lake & Palmer or Styx, which is to say, not very well. ELO’s best albums— A New World Record and Discovery in particular—are prime examples of the excesses of the '70s, with all the pomp and studio wankery of the most ambitious prog rock imaginable. And yet, Lynne deployed those techniques in service of songs that had all the exuberance and abandon of early rock 'n' roll. If he was making big statements, then they typically amounted to "I really want tonight to last forever / I really wanna be with you."
Given their propensity for cosmic imagery (have you seen their web site?), the title of their latest album sounds all the more wistful, as though the absence of alien life is the saddest thing Lynne could ever imagine. That particular melancholy informs first single and album opener "When I Was a Boy", which may sound slight but is animated by the kind of nostalgia often found in country songs. "Radio waves kept me company in those beautiful days when there was no money," Lynne sings, as though flipping through old photo albums. "When I was a boy, I had a dream." He’s still no wordsmith, but there’s something bracing about his directness; any lyrical pretensions would ruin the reverie.
On the other hand, you have something like "Dirty to the Bone". With its florid harps and thrumming drums, it’s an upbeat pop song in tone and tempo. But the lyrics are mean-spirited to a near-comical degree, as Lynne describes one of those she-devils who seem to exist only in old rock songs: "She’ll mess you up, she’ll move around… she’ll deceive you till the cows come home." That kind of cartoony straw-woman writing abounded in the '70s, but the casual misogyny, not to mention such threadbare cliché, feels profoundly out of place now.
Alone in the Universe fares best when Lynne is more generous, when he can contrast the downcast sentiments of the lyrics with the effervescence of the music. After a rocky side 1, side 2 picks up considerably, thanks to light-speed "Ain’t It a Drag" and the zero-gravity "I’m Leaving You." Lynne may be a maximalist, but he makes every element count. He still has a good ear for simple but driving rhythm sections, and most of these songs use an acoustic strum to augment the beat and warm the track—a familiar, but still effective, technique. Likewise, the sympathetic backing vocals on "All My Life" underscore the yearning in the songs, making the simplicity of the lyrics ("I’m so glad I found you, just want to be around you") sound all the sweeter.
Alone in the Universe doesn’t simply unearth that classic ELO sound like some ancient artifact. Instead, it gently updates those elements to 2015, the year Lynne celebrates his 68th birthday and his 52nd year in the music business. These songs sound precarious, both musically and emotionally. Partly that is due to age and the slight quaver in Lynne’s vocals, which aren’t quite as robust as they used to be. Partly it is due to technology. Lynne has always used to the studio to define his band’s entire identity, and the difference between then and now is the difference between the air-brushed UFO on A New World Record and the CGI saucer on Alone in the Universe. There’s a gauzy thinness to the sound, an inescapable two-dimensionality that occasionally hinders Lynne’s mission. Still, this is a fine addition to their catalog, perhaps not as consistent as 2001’s Zoom but much better than these late-career revival albums tend to sound.
