Even when the Electric Light Orchestra were in their 1970s pomp – baroque visionaries belting out shimmering intergalactic anthems atop a bespoke flying saucer stage – bandleader Jeff Lynne was a relatively shy and retiring performer. Not so long after that, he was simply a shy and retired performer, mothballing ELO in the early 1980s to concentrate on writing and producing for rock royalty. Instead of peacocking as a prog-pop Captain Kirk, he seemed much happier as Scotty, performing sonic miracles while cloistered in the engine room.
In the giant, UFO-esque Hydro arena, a near-capacity audience is here to pay tribute to ELO’s reactivated retro-futurism. “I love you, Jeff!” cries an impassioned and undoubtedly male voice. Since reforming in 2014, the rebranded Jeff Lynne’s ELO may have released a comeback album but are still very much in greatest-hits-delivery mode, a strategic decision that continues to pay off handsomely (they will play four nights at the O2 later this month).
The fact that Lynne’s stage persona was always so diffident means that even at 70 he seems as animated as he ever was, self-contained but still capable of wringing out surprisingly fierce licks on his Gibson Les Paul. At one point, the musical director of his urbane 12-piece band – including a three-piece string section and two backing singers, essential for filling out the luxurious ELO sound – pays effusive tribute to Lynne’s songwriting gifts and receives an emphatic crowd roar in return. From behind his shades, the man himself contentedly flips two thumbs up in laidback acknowledgment and, from him, it feels like two delirious blasts of an air horn.
Lynne once filled an entire side of a double album with an ornate, four-movement music suite about the weather but his 2018 live sequencing is as well-paced and on target as a biathlon gold medallist. Within the opening 10 minutes, he has unleashed the slink-and-falsetto cocktail groove of Evil Woman, and from that moment on, the energy levels rarely dip for 90 minutes.
Handle With Care nods to Lynne’s time with supernova supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, accompanied by frazzled vintage footage of Dylan, Petty, Harrison and Orbison. But despite knocking about with giants, Lynne is pointedly not one for anecdotes. The closest thing he gets to baring his soul is the relatively new song When I Was a Boy, a misty-eyed but sure-footed piano ballad wisely followed by the vaunting Livin’ Thing, a deathless hit that seemingly electroshocks the entire crowd to their feet.
Lynne’s fusion of honeyed harmonies, widescreen emotion and irresistible disco was once an Alan Partridge punchline but now sounds sublime, even if the laser light-show during Shine a Little Love keeps at least one foot planted in the 1970s. Out of the Blue, the double album that provides the backbone and space-elevator highs of this set, was released 41 years ago this month but now sounds utopian in a way that feels incredibly welcome at a time when optimism is in such short supply. As spiritual recharges go, nothing quite beats the realisation that most people instinctively break into the same jogging-on-the-spot dance move when they hear the opening piano chords of Mr Blue Sky, one of the climactic highlights of a supreme pop-picker’s guide to the ELO galaxy.
• At Manchester Arena, tonight and Saturday. Then touring UK until 26 October
