Oliver Watson

Every bit as fantastic as it is big and boisterous, “Out of the Blue” genuinely feels like a grand and fun adventure all with fun and engaging material from start to finish in all 17 of it’s tracks—and to think this whole album apparently took Jeff Lynne less than a month to write this proves his excellence as a songwriter. Mix that with the excellent production, great composition, good structuring, and razor sharp focus, and what you have here is a masterpiece. Easily one of, if not the best of 1977.

As brilliant as it is weird, “Eldorado” would prove to be a huge first step in shaping the band into forever rock and roll superstars, as it’s razor sharp focus, bouncy, yet unsettling vibe, excellent material from start to finish, great structure, and superb composition and production held this album be an underrated classic, and one of the best prog rock albums of the ‘70s. It’s big, boisterous, fun, rockin’, and occasionally ominous. It’s Eldorado.

Louder, poppy, sloppy, and unfocused, “Halfway To Sanity” shows the band trying to cram in as much variety as possible while completely forgetting to make an enjoyable album in the process. Whether it be the weird jabs at hard metal or going full 60s bubblegum pop, this album doesn’t have any idea of what it wants to be, since nothing flows well whatsoever. What’s worse is that the execution of both genres don’t really hit their mark. That’s not to say there aren’t any good songs on here, as there are a few decent ones, but none of them are necessarily brilliant by any means. In fact, some may come off as more stupid than anything else, since the guitars can be way too soft to be metal in a few songs, yet Joey still screams over them. Doesn’t help that the song writing, overall, is just sloppy. Even the best songs here don’t come close to the creative heights that made their older songs such classics. All in all, this shows the band in need of something new, since there’s simply little to no focus here, whatsoever. And, if you mix that with the bad structure, strange production that only works with about half of the album, and material that never goes beyond good, but not great, which is still somewhat rare, what you’ve got here is a huge mess that’ll drive anyone all the way to their sanity if they have the misfortune of having to sit through this sloppy and unfocused folly. 2.8/10

The composition, the production, the song writing, the atmosphere, the structure, and pretty much everything is in their top form here, and for this being a debut album is so astounding, it almost doesn't seem like it, because this is an excellent example of a near perfect rock album that'll live on as one of the best albums of all time. 10/10

For as keyboard heavy and overpoduced this may sound, this may turn some off at first, but with the right mindset, "Shout" is a surprisingly enjoyable time that has aged like fine wine. May have been extremely disappointing at release, but in 2019, it's pretty solid and has enough memorable material to be a rare hidden gem that has enough to be recommendable to anyone looking for a groovy, silly, and pretty awesome time, despite it's flaws. 6.8/10