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
