Listening Post: Roxy Music - Avalon

Roxy Music - Avalon - 1982

Just how influential was Avalon? Besides being the crowning achievement of the New Romantic movement that Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry started, it is also the flashpoint for just about every other band of the era that is associated with the movement. The Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunneymen, Simple Minds, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet even Qarterflash and Romeo Void and Yaz, just to name a few. Most of them were already recording already but there's no doubt they all count Roxy as an influence. And this is Roxy Music's salvo of relevance.
The white soul of the title track calls to mind every single John Hughes movie or John Hughes moment you ever lived. It doesn't matter if it was featured in St. Elmo's Fire, or Breakfast Club or About Last Night or She's Having a Baby or not. THIS is the music that, when played, immediately transports you back to a time. The sounds are clean, the spaces between (The title of the second track!) are as important as notes themselves. Never had Ferry and Eno sounded to similar and so disparate. What Eno was investigating with music deconstruction Ferry was incorporating into listenability and pop. Just to prove he can, Ferry dabbles in instrumentals ("India") which lasts about as long as its supposed to, ala Another Green World, and then gives over to the lamentation of "While My Heart is Still Beating".
And that opener! "More Than This". Why isn't THAT played at every wedding???
And with the last, eulogic, "Tara", Roxy Music was over. New Romantics had just begun to hold sway and they would for a few more years before giving over to...a host of other movements. But can you think of a better way to say goodbye?

If you don't have Avalon in your record collection there's no way you can really say you're a fan of the 80s. Or music.

Grade: A+
ASide: Avalon, More Than This
BlindSide: Take a Chance with Me

Listening Post: Roxy Music - Country Life

Roxy Music - Country Life - 1974

There's no way I was going to look back at Brian Eno's solo work without taking a good hard look again at one of the most important New Wave records from his old band, Roxy Music. I've never heard the band WITH Brian Eno just with Bryan Ferry so I have no frame of reference. Country Life is considered one of the seminal works of the second British Invasion, right? (it also has the benefit of the greatest album cover a teenager could hope for in 1974 (there it is, again! 1974. Wow, what an amazing year!)

From the outset with "Thrill of It All" there's no way anyone would mistake this for a Brian Eno led band. In fact, I would say that David Bowie's LATER 80s music owes much to this record. As do a number of new romantics. Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Psychedelic Furs, Culture Club, so many others, this is their template.
For the most part, Country Life is a pretty, well produced, easy pop rock record. It occasionally gets a little treacly like on "out of the Blue" but I think much of that is due to Ferry's unctuous, slippery voice. Only Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet could out lounge him in the era. One gets the feeling that Ferry would be more comfortable in docksiders without socks and Izod shirts. That doesn't mean the music isn't great, it means that just as the teeth begin to bite in a song, he's there to make sure the rip is clean and that when you die, it's from exsanguination not from the pain of the bite.
The second side of Country life is the more experimental, darker, british side, opening with the almost somnabulant "Bitter-Sweet" and following it the sad harpsichord led "Triptych" and devolving into the libertine "Casanova". It's great that you can choose like this, almost two different albums or eps. I prefer side one, but the Resident/Romeo Void part of me loves the second side.

Grade: A
ASide: Thrill of it All, Prairie Rose
BlindSide: All I Want is You, Bitter-Sweet