Elo's time machine is stalled somewhere between Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Star Trek, yet as long as Jeff Lynne's future-vision Beatlemania comes in near-perfect Top Forty spurts, why moan? Time's thematic conceit (supposedly a look backward from the twenty-first century) is pretty superfluous: the synthesized rock & roll cellos in "Hold On Tight" and the Spanish stroll of "The Way Life's Meant to Be" make those tunes all-weather singles for the here and now. And you can't help but wonder what the endless bottom of "Another Heart Breaks" might do to the slow dancers out on the killing floor.

Only one major quibble: against the electronic landscapes, vacuum-packed vocals and sleight-of-the-art edits, all-time bashing great Bev Bevan becomes just another sound effect–a wandering cymbal amid the beep alarms and intermittent circuits. If ELO's not careful, they're going to end up becoming the kind of cheese that squirts out of an aerosol can. As it is, they're perilously close to fitting the description of the heartache in Lynne's "Yours Truly, 2095" dream home: "...the latest in technology/Almost mythology, but she has a heart of stone." (RS 358)

DEBORAH FROST