10 Overrated Rock Albums Of The 80s
7. Roxy Music - Avalon
To some fans, this era is what Roxy Music are all about - louche lounge lizards making pristine, monied soft rock, strutting about in suits and not giving a hoot how they looked doing it. Those people, frankly, are crazy.
In their first iteration, with Brian Eno’s angular braininess supplementing Bryan Ferry’s style, they were an incredible proposition. Their first three records (the last made sans-Eno but with his art rock vibes) are unique and agelessly cool.
Avalon, by contrast, is slush. The edges have been sanded off, the songs written for the Thatcher age, rather than the space age. “More Than This” is admittedly a lovely tune, but it’s so safe, so radio friendly. The title track fares worse, a snooze of a song written by a band that had settled into a groove in which they barely needed to get into gear to put out music.
The record, their last, maintains a steady tempo and volume throughout, pitching itself closer to muzak than the freak outs and experiments of old. We all mellow as we get older, but these guys sound half asleep.