Electric Light Orchestra
Discovery

THE REVIEW

Among many rock and industrial-electronic titles that I favor and review, there is also room for an excellent album from the late '70s that can be defined as "pop" in every sense, yet with such qualitative characteristics that make it worthy of more attention than any truly pop work.

Indeed, in "Discovery", on the reminiscences of the prevailing mood of the time, that is, the disco vibe, it already implanted the precursors of the themes dear to the '80s, alternating a melodic vein with a synthpop vein, seasoned with solid rock'n'roll structures and with a splash of electronics that already seemed astonishing then.

Jeff Lynn's band lined up a series of nine immediately catchy tracks that, with the dancing blessing of the opening "Shine a little love", full of falsetto choruses and chirping violins, continued with a handful of great hit-singles interspersed with American-flavored serenades, but no less enjoyable for that. "Confusion", "Last train to London", "Midnight Blue": these are some of the titles that today make us say "if only there were more...!" Not to mention the orchestral "The diary of Horace Wimp", with psychedelic hints and Beatles-like scents, and the final riff of "Don't bring me down", another hit single that in its apparent straightforwardness revisits the clichés of rock'n'roll with an incredibly catchy beat.

E.L.O. certainly reached its commercial and popular peak with this album which remains a cornerstone of its genre without belonging to any specific genre and especially without a true geographical cultural identity, as it seems to have an American sound approach to totally European lyrics and inspirations. This is somewhat what happened to Supertramp in those years: a solidly British band that everyone believed was made in the USA. "Discovery", with its fairy-tale cover, is not part of the trends that identify the period. It has no shadows of new wave nor of punk. If anything, it inherits a lively taste of the now-mature disco trend and does not bother to please fashions, thus automatically becoming a fashionable album broadcast on the radio every hour of the day (I remember that "Confusion" and "Don't bring me down" were playing in a loop) and in the end, never aged.

To some today it may sound like simplistic and predictable music. But I wonder how it is that I know a lot of experts in innovative rock who have this record at home and won't part with it.