Some imagined that by Avalon, Roxy Music had degenerated into non-ironic AOR. But the sounds on this, the biggest-selling album of their career, are as avant-garde as anything they'd ever done, just more subtle, Ferry having exchanged art attack for ambient seduction. Remember this came out in spring 1982, as New Pop was peaking—it's as if the Godfather had returned to show the rookies how elegant isolation should really be expressed. Throughout there are expressions of Ferry's uncertainty, plus evidence they'd been listening to Joy Division and Jan Garbarek.
