Album #114: The Move - Message From The Country

The Move

Message From The Country (1971)

By 1970, The Move were essentially finished as a band. A number of lineup changes had seen the group left as a three piece, with only multi-instrumentalist Roy Wood and drummer Bev Bevan left from the original lineup; they had been joined by former Idle Race guitarist Jeff Lynne on the band's previous album Looking On. It wasn't the lineup changes that ensured The Move were a dead band walking; it was Wood and Lynne's exploration of the sounds and concepts that would result in the birth of Electric Light Orchestra. They were keen to leave The Move behind and explore this new direction.

Message From The Country was to be the band's final album. Recorded at the same time as some of the tracks that would end up on ELO's debut album, the group differentiated between the two by keeping any songs with cellos on the ELO side of the ledger, while songs featuring Roy Wood's array of saxophones would end up on the Move side. Nevertheless, some of the compositions and touches on this album are extremely similar to ELO's early work (both with and without Wood).

The Album

The album hits the ground running with the somewhat psychedelic, rumbling rocker Message From The Country. The extremely loud and heavy bass is highly prominent, and turns out to be an overarching theme of the whole album, though unlike other songs the drums don't match the bass and are a bit hollow. Lynne's lead vocal is supported by the heavily overdubbed vocal harmonies that would later become an ELO trademark. Ella James has more in common with the earlier Move sound - a harder edged, pop rock sound with a ferocious vocal from Wood, as does the thoroughly decent Until Your Mama's Gone, which combines throughout its five minutes a bluesy feel, created by buzzing guitars and saxophones and driven by the rhythm section, with a ragtime piano solo and an extended guitar solo.

However, the progressive direction that Wood had largely shifted the band towards a few years earlier is the dominant musical paradigm here. Though surprisingly, the album's most 'pop' moments come from Lynne, not Wood, whose solo contributions are fairly traditional. From Lynne, there's the solid No Time, an acoustic ballad with a complex arrangement featuring slide guitar, flutes and a double-tracked harmony vocal; The Minister, a sublime rock tune with a driving rhythm, a riff that could have been stolen via time machine from the 80s New Wave movement and brilliant vocal work from Lynne and Wood; and the proggy, ELO-lite The Words of Aaron, the highlight of which has to be Wood's brilliant bassline.

Wood's only radically different song is the disappointing It Wasn't My Idea To Dance, where his choir of different saxophones dominates the soundscape and the last two minutes are a freeform jam, where it seems all three musicians decided to play whatever they felt like. He and Lynne also cowrote the album closer My Marge, a tribute to the musical sound of the 30s and 40s; it's a vaudeville tune (just listen to Lynne's ye olde vocal stylings) and it's comfortably the shittiest song on the record, if not on any Move record.

As for Bevan, he may never have had a songwriting credit after this ever again, and he certainly was no singer, but he contributes to two of the most interesting tracks on the album - one as songwriter, the other as vocalist. As songwriter, he penned the Elvis Presley pastiche Don't Mess Me Up, which is an incredibly accurate likeness - it has everything that characterised Presley's music (a multitracked Wood and Lynne acting as Presley's backing singers The Jordanaires, a good Elvis impersonation from Wood and Lynne's shuffling, simple guitar solo). As vocalist, he takes the lead on Wood's superb Ben Crawley Steel Company, which is a pure country song, made all the more obvious by Bevan's incredibly deep, Johnny Cash-like vocal and Wood's lyrics which tell a typical country music tale of struggle, heartache and brutal revenge.

Interestingly, the five songs that later accompanied the re-release of the album (all singles and B-sides) are better than a lot of material that made it onto Message From The Country. Even to the end, The Move were quality popsters, even if they didn't want to be.

The Verdict

Perhaps it's my love of ELO, but I happen to believe that The Move are one of England's most underrated 60s/70s bands. Message From The Country is a good album that acts as a reminder of where the band had been, where they were at the time and where the members would be in the future. While Wood and ELO didn't really fit (he left during the recording sessions for the band's second album) his influence on the ELO sound is undeniable, and it's here on this album that the blueprint was firmly laid down.

I freely admit this album isn't for everyone but people who appreciate the classic British early prog sound will like it.

My rating: *** and a half

Standout Tracks

Message From The Country

The Minister

Ben Crawley Steel Company