A$# 034 Electric Light Orchestra | Eldorado

The full title - Eldorado, A Symphony By The Electric Light Orchestra - gives the first clue how this album is different from its predecessors, and how much the scope of Jeff Lynne's vision and genius had progressed in four albums.

Released in 1974, Eldorado marked the first time that ELO worked with a full symphony orchestra and choir to back them, and it is a concept album that allowed Jeff to build a loosely-spun tale of a Walter Mittyesque character who imagines different lives.

The album opens with an overture (Eldorado Overture) that sets the tone for much of what to come - orchestral passages introducing the individual songs, which range from a near-perfect ballad to exciting up-tempo rockers, all the while describing the imagined adventures of the protagonist.

The overture builds slowly, and has a spoken prologue that tells how "the universal dreamer rises up above his earthly burden." The orchestral section segues into the haunting and gorgeous Can't Get It Out Of My Head (which became the first US top 10 single for the group). The protagonist accounts how his dreams are more vital than his ordinary life:

Bank job in the city
Robin Hood and William Tell and Ivanhoe and Lancelot, they don't envy me
Sitting till the sun goes down
in dreams the world keep going round and round

And I can't get it out of my head
no, I can't get it out of my head
Now my old world is gone for dead
'cos I can't get it out of my head, no no

Next up is a rocker called Poor Boy, which Jeff has described as "a song about an all-conquering hero from the Middle Ages". In Laredo Tornado, the protagonist is a grey, urban world, lamenting that the wild has been paved over. But Poor Boy (The Greenwood) takes him back to the pastoral world, this time as a sort of Robin Hood. After CGIOOMH, this is my favourite track on the album.

Mister Kingdom is a mid-tempo number that has our hero wanting to escape the world, fly above it, and to relive "the laughter and follies / that are locked inside [his] head". It has some cool passages where Richard Tandy's synthesizers seem to swirl around and envelop the orchestral accompaniment

Nobody's Child is sort of a seductive song about a painted lady. (About 16 years later, Jeff would play on a completely different song called Nobody's Child, with the Traveling Wilburys.)

Illusions In G Major is an uptempo rocker that gets the heart racing again in the way that his earlier Move song Down On The Bay does, and his later ELO hit, Hold On Tight.

In the title track, Eldorado, our dreamer returns to his ordinary world, but longs to return to his imagined universe:

And I will stay, I'll not be back, Eldorado.
I will be free of the world, Eldorado.

Then finale wraps things up nicely.

The remastered CD contains two bonus tracks - an instrumental medley that explores many of the albums musical themes, and Dark City, a short demo of a song that became Laredo Tornado.

This album set the stage for ELO's soon-to-come mega-success: full orchestral sounds supporting songs that were (and are) pop / rock gems. With this fourth outing, the world was put on notice that Jeff Lynne and co. had arrived.

Track listing:
1. Eldorado Overture
2. Can't Get It Out Of My Head
3. Boy Blue
4. Laredo Tornado
5. Poor Boy (The Greenwood)
6. Mister Kingdom
7. Nobody's Child
8. Illusions In G Minor
9. Eldorado
10. Eldorado Finale
plus bonus tracks on remastered CD:
11. Eldorado Instrumental Medley
12. Dark City