Terry, your ELO premise is wrong. While the band's original records were
equal, more or less, to crappy, pretentious, classical rock, the ELO period
that Summerteeth is inarguably borowing from, and borrowing heavily--I say
inarguably, because you only have to listen to A New World Record to hear
the obvious similarities (see my ND review to get specifics) but also
because Tweedy, as I've said before, has confirmed that ELO was one of the
bubblegum sources Wilco itself heard in the record--is the late 70s period
when the crappy and pretentious aspect gave way completely to a pure-pop
approach. Perhaps that sound would be similarly dissed as slight and
bubblegummy here but for sure, records like Face The Music, A New World
Record and Out of The Blue were the antithesis of pretentious, classical
rock. And, to my ears, the opposite of crappy too.
But while ELO is clearly a major source here, the disc is not an ELO clone
record--there's a lot of ELO contemporaneous stuff in there too (ABBA,
Raspberries, Babys, etc etc etc) as well as more certain to be approved
sources like solo Paul and John and Beach Boys and Big Star ya da ya da.
Anyway, ELO sounds, arrangements and production approaches are always
applied piecemeal and as needed, not duplicated outright.
In other words, more than anything in regards to sound, Summerteeth
understands one thing that solo John and Paul and Alex Chilton and Brian
Wilson and Eric Carmen and so many other pop masters (Specter,
Holland/Dozier/Holland, Leiber/Stoller, B. Sherrill, O. Bradley, Gamble &
Huff & T. Bell, G. Martin and so on) have understood: great records are
RECORDS--that is, studio creations--not just live performances.
Hell though, influences are just one way of approaching the record; they
certainly don't account for its artistic success. For example, for my
money, ST destroys every album by ELO--which in its middle phase made a
great deal of just fabulous pop music (and no, I'm not being ironic)--on a
lyrical basis and is far more consistent musically too. But, then, that's
not going to be too shocking to all those who would dismiss 70s pop out of
hand anyway. --david cantwell
