Avonmore is one his best albums to date.

Part of the success is the strength of the core studio band which feature throughout most tracks - Johnny Marr, Nile Rodgers, Oliver Thompson, Marcus Miller, Guy Pratt, Fonzi Thornton and Tara. They make Avonmore current and cohesive.

Two excellent co-writes with Johnny and Olie or three if you include Johnny and Mary. Cementing the strength of the studio band.

The success extends to reclaiming the 'stolen' tracks and making them his own again. Yes, I hope he has many more drafts and sketches awaiting his magic!

Hipsters,
Windswept couldn't have put it better himself!
The provenance of tracks is always interesting but doesn't determine their quality. Many canvasses are turned to the wall and then revisited to great effect.
Regards,
W2

He doesn't tend to work with a studio band as such. He normally has a basic song structure sorted out with scat vocals and keyboard/piano sorted. Then gets various musicians in, one at a time normally, to add their ideas and bits.,none of which is already written. If he likes it ,it's added to the song, hence 9 guitarists on one song !! I suppose it means they all get a credit for what they've added to the song. But not a song writing credit !! During Avalon, I heard that Hubbard was called in a lot , and not Manzanera,which is why he doesn't appear on Lost. Even Yannick Etienne's bits were recorded before Manzanera and Mackay knew.

Agree Ian S, what's different about Avonmore is the use of a core studio band and to great effect. The recording process is well documented by Bryan himself and is not unique to him - many bands record with the individual band members laying their separate tracks. Bryan has also referred to his studio band for Avonmore and I aint going to argue. Would love to see this group live.

It's really the first BF album that i have no real interest in - i find it painful to listen to ... One night stand , A special kind of guy , driving me wild (those awful dated scratch noises ... arghhh) , loop de loo , Lost ... all turgid and empty experiences... I can't even listen to these songs all the way through. Midnight Train is passable and cool because it's funky - but it's hardly 'lyric idea' of the year - it never was even 20 years ago . The covers are slightly better - the Todd Terje being the most interesting because the production makes it sound fresh and lighter than all the other songs on the album - Maybe some remixes might help.... The only interesting track for me was the title track - because I assumed that it may be recent ( probably because of the distant vocals and the Ollie co- write) and now i see it has Flea on base ... so thats sends it back a few years. Also, we have to wonder at the motives behind releasing two albums - one almost great - Olympia - and another mediocre to say the least - Avonmore - when one high standard album could have been created from everything that was lying about ... I'll spotify Avonmore occasionally - i'd hate to have the cover artwork in my house. I'll probably never see him live again.

Gardner:
I don't feel as strongly as you do about the new album, but I appreciate where you are coming from.

For me the title track is the only one of the originals that truly holds my interest, but it is weighed down with NINE guitar players. NINE! What? I'd like to hear a version with just Ollie T, Chris Spedding, Guy Pratt, TGPT and Colin G. A clean straightforward sound where the emotions of BF vocal and lyrics are fully evident. What we have now is an aural soup that overwhelms but does not inspire or edify.

Overall, the lyrics on the album are bland bland bland. Gee, you're Driving Me Wild. zzzzz A while back BF wrote a great, clever song about a One Night Stand called Love is the Drug. Now he writes a song called One Night Stand! zzzzz

The two cover songs are actually pretty good. If Send/Clowns featured BF's voice from the 1990s if would be a super track.

DCJ

I think it may be a mix of an old and new vocal on SITC. The more i think about it - i feel that the decision to spread all this pre Alphaville - Horoscope 20 years old stuff out over TWO albums with a few newish things and covers as filler is quite insulting to fans. He could have made one almost perfect(ish) album . For me, at least the Jazz Age was honest and fresh sounding ( despite the fact that it was used to play for more time ). Olympia had 'Reason or rhyme' (and I adore that piece of music) and a few other light gems - maybe Shameless with The Groove Armada. The remixes of most of the songs on these albums usually sound lighter, less thick and more interesting - this can be heard in Johnny and Mary. A hotch potch of old dregs could've been saved by different production by different people e.g.:- Todd Terje. Apart from how disappointing it is in every way - name , artwork, songs, lyrics, production ...the only other real surprise about Avonmore is that he didn't throw in the newer awful version of Mother of Pearl as well... haha .

He's not had such good reviews for years,but although I like all of the songs on the album, there are no truly great ones. Send in the Clowns and Johnny and Mary are ok , but if he was intending to do 2 cover versions, there are better songs out there. Olympia had 4 or 5 great songs . the rest, I never listen to. So, is it better to have an album of 5 great songs and 5 rubbish or an album of 10 good/average songs ?

The thing people have to remember about the Horoscope/Alphaville sessions is that these were never meant to be in the public domain. So it has now become easy to compare what we have on Olympia and Avonmore to the Horoscope/Alphaville sessions. Had we not actually heard these cuts then we would be hearing these tracks 'fresh' as opposed to comparing it to a cut that was not fully completed.

I know that Bryan has a lot of 'tracks' stored and then revisits them again and again often adding new musicians along the way and sometimes completely reworking the whole track. In addition to my day job I also create electronic music and have loads of tracks stored that I keep returning to (just finished a few that I had started when I was in a group in 2003!) I'm not comparing myself to Bryan in anyway but can certainly relate to his style of working - even some famous authors have a number of books started that they end up returning to and completing years later.

It's obvious that Bryan had never intended anyone to hear the Alphaville/Horoscope sessions. I do understand that we will all end up comparing versions but find it a bit sad when it's deemed that he has just 'stuck' these tracks on the album when, quite clearly, a lot of work has gone into them.

I'm not sure how much control Bryan has over his record deal but Olympia was the last on his previous record label with Avonmore being the second of his current three album record deal. I haven't been insulted by him bringing out these two albums at all. In fact I'm now looking forward to his third album with BMG!

As someone who hadn't previously heard any of these tracks in their earlier (bootlegged) versions I'm just approaching the album as 10 Bryan Ferry tracks that I've never heard before. Granted that some of them feature the Ferry voice in a stronger state from years gone by, I still think it's a terrific collection of material. Whilst some of the songs remind me of the Mamouna era these have stronger hooks to my mind than many did on the 1994 album, where Bryan seemed too often to concentrate on the groove instead of the melody for my liking.