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I had this title originally on vinyl & later on CD but it never seemed to last long enough. Well, this remaster which sounds great contains additional tracks which make for a much better album. If you enjoy ELO & never really thought much of this album. Give this remaster a shot & I believe you'll enjoy it much more then the standard CD release! Search "Judemac Forever" on msn.

Rating: 4 out of 5

This mighty record has always been unjustly airbrushed from the ELO catalogue: too eighties/too cheesy/not-stringy enough/not seventies enough... well, now it's time to forget all that and ljust et the classic Lynne harmonies and rock'n'roll rhythms wash over you. The best thing released in 1986 - and that includes The Queen Is Dead (talk about sounded dated and eighties - and I love The Smiths)

Rating: 4 out of 5

I don't know what it is about this album, but the tracks just never seem to draw me in. I can't listen to it very long, before getting bored.

I love ELO and consider myself to be a great fan, but the big orchestra sound seemed to have finally disappeared, into what I would call a disc of quick something tracks.

Nothing sticks out, nothing gets you going and the big booming sound of Out of the Blue has gone, the sheer magic of Time, etc the sounds just seem irritating and very fake.

Its a shame, but all good things come to an end, but at least we still have Out of the Blue, A New World Record, Time, Discovery , Eldorado, you can't have it all but at least we have those to look back on.

Rating: 3 out of 5

It's a strange album this. By his own admission, Jeff Lynnne's enthusiasm for ELO had waned greatly by this point, feeling himself constricted by the orchestral sounds that were the band's trademark. BoP was an attempt to escape from this and inject some new life into things.

By this stage, ELO was only really Lynne, Richard Tandy and Bev Bevan, so arrangements were very much more pared down. In hindsight of course, we know that things didn't really work and that Lynne went off to produce, while Bevan ended up in ELO II. Part of the reason this was the quality of the material, which wasn't as strong as some of ELO's earlier triumphs, while part was due to changing public mood. The world had moved on and ELO didn't really figure anymore.

While not hitting their earlier heights, the basic album still has some extremely strong material on it, mostly in the opening half. Indeed, the first three songs, Heaven Only Knows, So Serious and Getting To The Point are all well crafted. The latter sounds as if it could have sat on 1979's Discovery while the first two are very strongly driven by rhythm. The only slight distraction is the chorus singing of So Seri-uss in the later. Calling America is, of course, very familiar to any ELO fan and the band's last major hit. The version of Endless Lies that made it to this album is actually less strong than the version that failed to make the cut on Secret Messages, where the Roy Orbison vibe Lynne was looking for seemed just that little bit better realised. The closer, Send It, is another nice straight up and down rock 'n' roll number, where the instrumentation makes it a novel treat and a fun listen.

The expanded edition's extras are mostly a collection of alternative versions, mostly of some interest (the alternative vision of the album's opener Heaven Only Knows is particularly diverting). But the high points are In For The Kill, later to become the more polished Caught In A Trap (though I preferred the lyric in the former) and, for me at least, the high point of the whole album: the barnstorming, throbbing Destination Unknown. I can't really imagine why this was relegated to a B-side and didn't make the original album because this is simply fabulous and my principal reason for buying this expanded edition.

In all, this is probably an album that the casual listener might regard with mild interest but little else, while many fans may want it for completeness. There are things to admire and appreciate, but less here to love than in the band's true heyday.

Rating: 3 out of 5