{"id":41751,"date":"2009-10-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/boys-and-girls\/"},"modified":"2009-10-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T00:00:00","slug":"boys-and-girls","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/boys-and-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Boys And Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"

I will always think of Bryan Ferry\u2019s sixth solo LP as Avalon Pt. 2, <\/i>since it\u2019s almost a carbon copy of the 1982 Roxy Music album. As with Avalon<\/i>, Boys And Girls <\/i>is slick, smooth, and sophisticated pop music that bears no resemblance at all to the frantic glitter rock that Roxy and Ferry became famous for in the \u201870s. Ferry wrote all of the songs here and coproduced the album with Rhett Davies. Upon its release, it quickly became Ferry\u2019s most successful solo effort, climbing all the way to the top of the British charts and spawning two Top 40 hits as well.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Opener \u201cSensation\u201d is a strong track that finds Ferry at his most majestic; it\u2019s awash with lush backing vocals and some brilliant guitar work by David Gilmour (who appears on every track).\u00a0 \u201cSlave To Love\u201d remains Ferry\u2019s biggest solo hit and one of his most recognizable songs to date.\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful love ballad greatly enhanced by an intoxicating rhythm track and possibly Ferry\u2019s most poetic lyrics. Gilmour is again all over this one, and I\u2019ll say here that his presence throughout the album is a welcome treat.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t Stop The Dance\u201d is an up-tempo, synth-driven pop song that serves to remind us that when the \u201880s were good, they were really, really good. The song was another Top 40 smash for Ferry and it remains one of my favorite of the decade.\u00a0 The one-minute wonder \u201cA Waste Land\u201d is really just an intro to \u201cWindswept,\u201d and the two make for the album\u2019s only sore spot. The latter sounds like an unfinished demo and is particularly out of place on this album that is so precise in almost every way imaginable.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chosen One\u201d is the closest Ferry gets to his funk-inspired days of the previous decade. It harbors a killer bass-driven instrumentation that Ferry weaves his abstract lyric around with ease in his most experimental moment on the record. \u201cValentine\u201d is a reggae-influenced song featuring Ferry pondering life rather than love this time (\u201cHow many men in a world of their own \/ There is no end to the great unknown.\u201d).\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cStone Woman\u201d is pure pop and is easily the album\u2019s lightest track \u2013 which I have to say is a welcome relief among this collection of tunes. While musically this is the quintessential \u201880s pop album, Ferry\u2019s ruminations on lost love and at times vexing studies of life and man\u2019s complexities can really bring the mood down a bit too much.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The title track closes out the album with five and a half minutes of what sounds like a Dire Straits track of the time. Mark Knopfler appears here as well, leading me to wonder how much he had to do with this one, as the similarities to \u201cPrivate Investigation\u201d are quite staggering.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it sounds fabulous and serves as a precursor to Ferry\u2019s next album, the exquisite Bete Noire<\/i>, <\/i>released in 1987. Boys And Girls <\/i>remains an impressive effort from Ferry, and its reissue in 2005 as a SACD has to be heard to be believed. My only criticism of it would be that it\u2019s a little too<\/i> slick for its own good.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":30112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7984],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41751","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bryan-ferry","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41751"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}