Avalon

Roxy Music

album cover

A Sumptuous Subterranean Trip

By the time Roxy Music got to Avalon, it was past its days as a brash upmarket glam band, past the escapades of the arty Country Life, and well beyond caring about conventionally configured hit singles. Instead, the British collective led by singer and pinup idol Bryan Ferry was completely obsessed with texture. This album recasts the pop song as a realm of lush, never-ending tactile pleasures.

There are standout compositions on Avalon. But the first thing that hits you are the dreamy environments—the pools of shimmering synthesizers, the formless enveloping fog of bass, the sheen of high-gloss disco drums. Into these delicately etched scenes slinks Ferry, talking about love and longing in a voice of weary dejection. He shrugs through the title track and sings "More than This" like a crooner trapped in a time warp. Busted up though he might be, he can't help but play the suave romantic lead, ready for the next candlelit seduction scene. Singing from a perch in the lonely shadows, he draws listeners out of the mundane and into a surreal funhouse, where high-life dandies go to contemplate the cosmos and nurse the romantic obsessions that are often their ruin.

Avalon's hypnotic, gorgeously languid sounds stand apart from almost everything else of its day—this is one of the most sumptuous listening experiences to come out of the 1980s. It's striking for its depth, the way its thick textures underscore the notion of love as an all-encompassing and sometimes tragic pursuit. And for the way Ferry communicates, in scattered, stunningly apt images and anguished utterances that never rise above the setting marked "Simmering Torment."

Genre: Rock
Released: 1982, Warner Bros.
Key Tracks: "Avalon," "More than This," "True to Life"
Catalog Choice: For Your Pleasure; Country Life
Next Stop: Brian Eno: Another Green World
After That: Be Bop Deluxe: Raiding the Divine Archive
Book Pages: 661–662