On NCB Radio Retrospective, we take a look back in time with an album that might not have received the love it deserved at time of release. On a previous column under this theme, we covered Lifeblood by Manic Street Preachers. Today the retrospective treatment is extended to a lesser-known, lesser loved but great little album by the mighty Electric Light Orchestra, the 2001 album ‘Zoom’.

Before we begin, you might be wondering ‘I’m reading this in December, why aren’t you wishing me a Merry Christmas and talking about Christmas music, such as that delightful song about that grandma there was no one quite like or waxing lyrical of the 1993 Christmas Number One? (which is a favourite, we can’t lie)”.

That’s simply because of two reasons. One, the person in our team that writes the column is a grinch. Secondly, because everywhere else does the same music on repeat, we do what we always do and stubbornly act differently. The odd Christmas song might sneak in by the lesser radical members of our gang and we generally make an exception for Christmas day, but we haven’t worked that out yet.

Anyway, back to Zoom by ELO. In many ways, it could be retrospectively considered as the precursor to what we now know as ‘Jeff Lynne’s ELO’ with the excellent comeback albums of Alone in the Universe and From Out of Nowhere, in that it was nearly all recorded by Mr Blue Sky himself and musically it is quite similar.

When it was released at the time, some lesser sighted music reviewers opined that it lacked the “classic” ELO sound and in that regard, they are right to a degree in that it doesn’t feature massive orchestras and is a smaller scale affair. If anything it sits quite nicely beside the final album from the ‘classic era’, 1986’s Balance of Power, which itself is a worthy yet panned album.

Within Zoom, there are some genuinely brilliant little tracks. Particular favourites to us are ‘Stranger on a Quiet Street’, ‘Melting in the Sun’ and ‘It Really Doesn’t Matter’ but by and large it’s all a great album.

Special mention has to be made to what we regard as the stand-out track on the album, ‘Ordinary Dreams’. It wouldn’t have looked out of place on 1981’s Time and definitely has some of the melancholy of Balance of Power. More than anything though, it typifies what we mentioned earlier with it being a pre-cursor to what came next – for the simple reason it sounds most similar to the title track to the first comeback album, ‘Alone in the Universe’. Although the lyric to Ordinary Dream is more personal, whereas Alone in the Universe is about a satellite being taken out of orbit, if memory serves us.

But what about Christmas? The fact that the original co-founder of ELO, Roy Wood went onto do that famous Christmas song with Wizzard is the nearest you’re getting festive wise out of us. Bah humbug.