The Move

Looking On has never enjoyed a strong reputation among Move fans, mostly because it's neither fish nor fowl -- too self-consciously heavy in texture to slot in with their pop/rock or trippy psychedelic past, but not deeply embedded enough in progressive rock to do more than hint at the band's reincarnation as the Electric Light Orchestra, it ended up not pleasing too many of their existing fans at the time of its release, and wasn't much more than a footnote to ELO's history. The title track is a case in point, a weighty, overamplified hard rock workout that works in some clever sitar-like effects and even an oboe break, it takes a lot of wading through the self-conscious heaviness to find those moments, though they're almost worth the trip when you do find them. "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" is, similarly, too strange a mix of heaviness for its own sake interspersed with moments of exoticism, buried deeply in the mix. Still, despite these miscalculations, this is the Move, after all, and with all the members that count present (unlike, say, the post-Jeff Lynn Idle Race effort from around that same period), loyalty alone dictated that real fans own it. And beside, it does have some sections that work magnificently -- "What ?" could have made it onto either of the first two ELO albums without a lot of alteration and no one would have known the difference; and "When Alice Comes Back to the Farm" manages to straddle the sound of both bands with amazing dexterity; and "Brontosaurus" speaks for itself, a thunderous delight. [Repertoire's 1998 reissue was greatly expanded to include ten bonus tracks.] ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide