I feel like it's a lot closer to the old site than the couple of years before it, but...and I hate to pick on one person...I'm not sure what Dan has been doing? He does such creative and wild stuff on his own stream and little of that energy seems to have made it here. Hell, I'd watch a show which was just him reading through an old magazine each week.
@unclejam23: honestly, the first five albums are all pretty similar, even though Eno is on the first two. Then they take a break and come back with sort of...synth-ish, disco-ish stuff (that's perhaps overstating those influences) that has some bangers but overall is ill-fitting. So then they get to Avalon, and it's legit one of the most beautiful and sumptuous records ever recorded, their last one, and the one where the smoothness of Ferry's solo career really comes to the forefront. They're basically a band with two halves, and the second half is less successful except for one towering statement. But much like Pixies' Trompe Le Monde is similar to the early Frank Black solo stuff, this is similar to Ferry's Boys and Girls. It's slick as hell, but boy does it work. I don't think Eno has much to do with that transition at that point, so much as it was the early 80s and it was the style at the time, but they certainly went out on top.
@unclejam23: you should check out Siren and Country Life and the first one and Avalon (the one with "More Than This"). This one is actually my fourth or fifth favorite, even though I love it!
This is a hell of an album, though I think they're pretty much great until the Flesh + Blood/Manifesto twofer (they have jams, too, fwiw) and then the comeback of Avalon. One of the best bands, full stop. Entire bands have chased what they did on the first two albums with limited success, though I'm still way into what they did after Eno left, and I wouldn't trade his solo stuff and ambient career for the world. Dude's new album is something else!
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