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Nov 4, 2019The wistfulness, the super-saturated sound, the layered harmonies and instrumentation, the timeless echo of pasts and retro-futures colliding. The humanity, the performed frailty at the heart of manufactured perfection. Lynne still has it. He still knows how to create the magic.
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Nov 1, 2019Like its predecessor, Alone in the Universe, this album is entirely good-natured, firmly in the lineage of classic ELO, without ever quite hitting the heights of the past. ... How far this autumnal romance will go remains to be seen but, for now, what a pleasure it is to have Lynne back.
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MojoOct 31, 2019From Out Of Nowhere is a stronger, better focused set than its predecessor. [Dec 2019, p.84]
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Nov 13, 2019There is certainly craftsmanship behind the songwriting here, but it lacks the sweep that the strings would bring to the classic hits.
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UncutOct 31, 2019Lynne is at his best as the world's greatest Beatles tribute act. [Dec 2019, p.26]
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Q MagazineNov 19, 2019It's warmly unreal how in thrall he remains to The Beatles, from melodic progressions down to the thwack of drums, but these heartache-powered ballads retain a simple elation at the power of rock'n'roll. [Jan 2020, p.110]
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Oct 31, 2019From Out of Nowhere could be an ELO album from 40 years ago, albeit with a bit of added digital polish.
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Oct 31, 2019As elegant as they are, the melodies don't easily lodge in the subconscious, but the bigger problem is that the production -- by Lynne, who plays virtually every note on the record -- is airless and precise. This dryness is a remnant of the digital age, where every element in a recording is exactly in the right place, and if it's not quite a drawback, it does mean From out of Nowhere can be a bit of an uncanny valley: it's close enough to a genuine item to satisfy, yet different enough to disarm.
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Nov 5, 2019From Out of Nowhere isn’t going to be turning heads in 2019 with its lackluster production and, at times, generic lyricism. But it does remind us that Jeff Lynne is one of pop music’s greatest hook writers, and that skill isn’t easily forgotten.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 14
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Mixed: 3 out of 14
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Negative: 0 out of 14
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Nov 4, 2019
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Nov 4, 2019
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Nov 1, 2019