Jeff Lynne - Long Wave

The man who gave us classics like "Telephone Line", "Don't Bring Me Down" and "Rock N' Roll Is King" has returned with new music. Not since Armchair Theatre have we been graced with his genius and that was twenty-two years ago so it's been a long wave just as this album is titled. The key to Long Wave is that the album is a nod to those songs that he grew up hearing as good old mom and dad were playing the radio at home as a child. 

The great rock n' roll and progressive pop that we enjoyed back in the hey day of ELO is not present here because of what this album is themed. The style of production he takes on this is more akin to his work with the post ELO projects but that's not entirely a bad thing and I do find some decent renditions on the album like "Mercy, Mercy" which sounds as one would expect Lynne to sound like albeit stripped down to the basics. The album is infused with warm melancholy. If it never crackles with startling candour, you sense that’s because he wants to pay simple homage to the tunes that formed him, rather than whip out his youthful diaries.

When you get to his take on the Etta James classic "At Last" you might have had enough of Long Wave because there is not much excitement in Jeff's covers.The ELO/Jeff Lynne sound does spring out with "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing" which he almost gets a good swing happening but the tempo just doesn't get up to a good dancing pace. The excellent reading of "Let It Rock" from Chuck Berry's incredible catolog is very good but pales when compared to the original and the country flavored cover from Mel McDaniels back in the eighties. The guitar riff'd version of "Beyond The Sea" is actually hard to listen to because it doesn't have the swagger that the song so naturally has in its most famous version by Bobby Darrin.

Still, Long Wave makes no attempt to avoid sentimentality. Love songs and brazen nostalgia are the album's bread and butter, and it's hard not to be drawn in by the comfort of Lynne's layer upon layer of pleasant melodic attention. But to want to pull this off the shelf and play it through multiple times it will not draw.