This year, Every Sunday Evening, Album Rock WXYG, The GOAT will be featuring a full album at 8:00 PM from the halcyon musical days of 1976. 1976 was one of the top Years in Album Rock history. Another year of tough choices every week. So many great ones to choose from. After 52 Weeks of featuring so many of the great albums that debuted in 1975, next Sunday we will be moving on to another amazing year of ALBUM ROCK EXCELLENCE, 1976.
Tune in at 8:00 PM, SUNDAY Evening, October 4th for “A New World Record”, the sixth studio album by the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). It was released on October 15,1976, by United Artists Records in the United States.
This was their second album to be recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich, the LP proved to be the band's breakthrough in the UK; after their previous three studio recordings had failed to chart in their home country, “A New World Record” became their first top ten album on the UK Albums Chart. It became a global success and reached multi-platinum status in the US and UK. The album sold five million units worldwide within its first year of release. The cover art features the ELO logo, designed by Kosh, for the first time; this logo would be included on most of the group's subsequent releases. The album yielded four hit singles, including "Livin' Thing", the transatlantic top ten hit "Telephone Line", which became the band's first gold-certified US single, the UK top ten hit "Rockaria!", and the US number 24 hit "Do Ya", a cover of the 1972 single by The Move, of which Lynne was a member between 1970 and 1972.
Jeff Lynne regards this album and its follow-up, “Out of the Blue”, as the high points in the band's history. One might be better off opting for “A New World Record” over its successor, however, as a more modest-sized creation chock full of superb songs that are produced even better. Opening with the opulently orchestrated "Tightrope," which heralds the perfect production found throughout this album, A New World Record contains seven of the best songs ever to come out of the group. The Beatles influence is present, to be sure, but developed to a very high degree of sophistication and on Lynne's own terms, rather than being imitative of specific songs. "Telephone Line" might be the best Lennon-McCartney collaboration that never was, lyrical and soaring in a way that manages to echo elements of Revolver and the Beatles without ever mimicking them. The original LP's second side opened with "So Fine," which seems like the perfect synthesis of guitar, percussion, and orchestral sounds, embodying precisely what Lynne had first set out to do with Roy Wood at the moment ELO was conceived. From there, the album soars through stomping rock numbers like "Livin' Thing" and "Do Ya," interspersed with lyrical pieces like "Above the Clouds" (which makes striking use of pizzicato bass strings).
This is a masterpiece with no weak songs where the prog and pop styles of ELO came together perfectly. Jeff Lynne's songwriting has never been stronger than on this album. From the opening of Tightrope you know you're in for something special.
Tune In and Turn On Sunday evening, October 4th at 8:00 PM for The GOAT'S "The Long Play with Al Neff”.
