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Four years ago, William "Bleu" McAuley traded his local Boston reputation for a Sony contract, the brilliant if overlooked Power Pop album Redhead and a couple of song placements on the high-profile soundtracks of Spider-Man and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! In the interim, Bleu was hipped to some inside studio techniques utilized by musician/producer Jeff Lynne to create his definitive sonic fingerprint. A longtime Lynne fan, Bleu decided to try some of the ideas in the service of songs written in the style of Lynne's best known entity, the Electric Light Orchestra, to see what came out the other end. The result is Alpacas Orgling, Bleu's dazzling AltPop homage to the majestic scope of ELO. Stacked to the rafters with Pop ringers (Jellyfish/Puffy Ami Yumi mastermind Andy Sturmer, erstwhile Candy Butcher Mike Viola, Papas Fritas drummer Tony Goddess, Self starter Matt Mahaffey, the boys of Hanson), Bleu has fashioned a set of songs that blend his contemporary songwriting style with Lynne's absolutely unmistakable studio wizardry. From the gorgeous ache and laconic grandeur of "Goodbye Innocence" and "Distracted" to the "Do Ya"-touched crunch of "Make Me" and the Wilburys Pop shake of "Don't Let It Go," Bleu has amazingly reinvented a timeless Pop era and infused it with his own indelible creative spark. It's heavenly enough that maybe he should have called it Mr. Bleu Sky. (BB) Grade: A-
