Boys and Girls
Album | Bryan Ferry
Picks up where Roxy Music left off.
In 1982 Roxy Music released their swan song Avalon, a shimmering, luxurious sonic tapestry, and one of the sleekest, most elegant albums of the era. Three years later, Roxy frontman Bryan Ferry followed it up with Boys and Girls. Ferry’s sixth solo release (he’d been moonlighting throughout Roxy’s lifetime), it picked up where Avalon left off both chronologically and musically; Boys and Girls found the suave singer reuniting with Avalon producer Rhett Davies as well as many of that album’s supporting musicians to create a similarly smooth, seamless piece of work. Of course, it’s not strictly Avalon Pt. II – Boys and Girls is more of an all-star affair, with contributions from David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, and Nile Rodgers, among others, and it’s a considerably more danceable affair, with a greater focus on supple grooves. It’s also a textural masterpiece, its complex latticework of guitars, synths, and percussion the aural equivalent of a rococo cathedral, with Ferry’s black-velvet voice floating gracefully atop it all. This seduction album nonpareil proved to be Ferry’s most successful solo outing, finally breaking him through to America, where he’d mostly been only a cult figure up until then.
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