Roxy Music - Avalon (1982)

Dan:

Avalon was the only Roxy Music album not to feature at least one alluring female model on its cover. The cover art of Sir Bryan Ferry (I assume) staring across the misty moors with a hooded falcon on his arm suggests a mythological turn for the band, which had already moved into its glossy period with Flesh + Blood (1980). Despite the new imagery, most of the songs on Avalon are consistent with Roxy Music's themes of infatuation, obsession, painful longing and broken hearts. They were simply made more elegant on Avalon than on any of Roxy's or Ferry's previous albums.

That elegance elevates Avalon to the top echelon of glam-prog in the 80s. It's a knockout gorgeous album, brilliantly conceived and executed. The vocals are perfectly measured, and the instrumental backing superb. I'm running the gamut of superlatives here, but I think they're deserved. 

The highlight of Avalon is the title track, which conjures images of King Arthur's Court and chivalrous knights and their ladies. The YouTube video for this song is a great complement to the album, as it takes you inside the manor where the party has ended but the dance continues. Ferry's singing is at its most romantic, and the accompanying vocal by Yanick Etienne is sublime. It's such a great song!

I also find "True to Life" to be an exceptional piece of songwriting delivered with just the proper rhythmic drive. The alienating aspects of night life are portrayed indistinctly but the message comes through:

Dancing city, now you're talking

But where's your soul

You've a thousand faces

I'll never know.

Travel way downtown in search of nothing
But the sky at night
And the diamond lady
Well, she's not talking but that's alright.

Two short instrumental pieces help to make Avalon's songs more poignant. "India" follows the title track on side 1, and "Tara" closes the album with Andy Mackay's beseeching soprano sax. 

Roxy Music's Avalon tour included the live performances in Glasgow and Fréjus, France that yielded The High Road EP and DVD and the Heart Still Beating CD, both of which are reviewed elsewhere in this blog. Not to be missed.

Steve:

Avalon was the first compact disc I recall entering our home, purchased by Dan on the same day as his first CD player in 1985. It was a great first choice, as its lush atmospherics were perfect for the superior sonic experience that CDs supposedly provided. It may be hard for younger readers to understand this, but when CDs came out, they were marketed as the antidote to the surface noise and rough, live sound of vinyl. Nowadays, of course, vinyl lovers shun the antiseptic, compressed sound they claim CDs have, but back in the mid-80s, compressed and antiseptic sounds were IN. It was a selling point, and lots of top-selling albums from that period boasted that super-clean sound - the same sound that many complain sounds "too 80s". 

I happen to love that sound when it's done well, and boy is it done well on Avalon. So much so that the pejorative terms "antiseptic" and "compressed" don't even seem appropriate. What they do sound is "spacious", "romantic", "nuanced/detailed" and other more positive terms. I have trouble selecting a favorite track, as each one is capable of putting a huge smile on my face.  

Bryan Ferry's solo album Boys and Girls (1985) is essentially a follow-up to Avalon and pushes all the same fabulous buttons. I even get the two albums confused with each other sometimes, as they both played constantly in our house in the early to mid 80s. One of my current favorite songs to listen to on my stereo, in fact, is the title track of Boys and Girls, a forlorn romantic dirge that seems to have nothing in particular to do with boys or girls, yet the chorus echoes that simple phrase in between love-torn verses. It all seems to mean the world to Ferry, and thus empathetically to me.