Olympia opens with "You Can Dance" which has an art rock/prog rock feel to it with hard riffing electric guitars and vocals sung in a glam rock tenor. Despite the obvious energy Ferry brings to the song, I found it boring and derivative of stuff he and similar artists were doing over two decades ago. However the second song on the album, "Alphaville," still has noticeable nods to Ferry's musical past but manages to sound much more contemporary with some really spiffy Carlos Santana-like guitar rhythms to help modernize (rather than be a derivative of) Ferry's song style. Ferry's still more than credible singing voice is also nimbly on display on this track with his raspy singing tenor acting as a nice counterbalance to the melody. "Heartache by Numbers" is the collaboration with Scissor Sisters and features a harder synth sound. Unfortunately, I found the jaunty melody with the choir-like chorus singing an odd match that made it very difficult to get into the song. "Me Oh My" is a slower tempo ballad that wisely introduces some piano to help enhance the sullen mood of the track. "Shameless," the Groove Armada collaboration, has a much slower and lighter beat than the version given to us on their album so it's definitely not as danceable to, but that's pretty much would we expect given the differences in these two artists. "Song to the Siren" is an interesting ballad that is both introspective and reluctantly hopeful at the same time that I really enjoyed and wouldn't be surprised to find on a Rom-Com soundtrack in the near future.
This being the debut Bryan Ferry album on a record label I very much respect and enjoy, I wanted very much to like this album. Unfortunately, the album just doesn't do enough to draw in the listener. Don't get me wrong, there are some cool things about it: the production on the album is absolutely top-notch, Bryan Ferry's singing voice has not deteriorated badly at all, and there are some absolutely terrific collaborators working on this album. But the track layout is completely off at the beginning of the album with the first couple of songs doing their best to not get you interested or excited about what you're going to hear. Also, a lot of the songs sound like they were stolen from some of Morrissey's more recent albums at least in terms of style and song construction. It's only on a few songs do we get something original and something worth spending our time on.
Score: 5.5/10
Song(s) to Sample: "Alphaville"
Sparkle Vision is a purely electronic techno album with no singing or vocal samples on any of the tracks. To further describe the album, I would say the genres of electronic music this recalls is predominantly breakbeat and chiptune, with some definite psych/Goa influences throughout the album. Like many electronic music albums, there is no clear delineation between tracks as there is a sound bridge of some type from song to song for the entire album. "Marshmallow Bazooka," the second track on the album, begins with a more down-tempo beat but slowly builds a slower psytrance feel. The haunting keyboard work forms a nice cross-rhythm with the electronic samples and beats, especially during the first half of the track. "Let's Play Deathball!!!" exhibits a very weird syncopation at the beginning of the track that by the time it starts to incorporate the beeps and other electronic sounds you expect to hear in a chiptune song it makes it very hard to get into the song. "Pterodactyl" has a trance-like beat to open the song that makes the song much more accessible from the opening beat so that by the time the band starts to expand the song it has already captured the attention of the listener.
Overall, I actually thought Sparkle Vision was a pretty decent electronica album. The track layout seemed logical and well thought out. Not every song is a winner but there's enough good stuff where I was never bored by the album. FuzZ even reuses melodies and beats in some non-consecutive songs to help bring about a more complete album composition by referencing earlier material from the disc. The one major problem I did have with the album was the length in time. The total time of it was less than 25 minutes long so that, in my opinion, seems more like an EP than a full length album.
Score: 6.5/10 (it would have gotten another point if the album were 10-15 minutes longer because 25 minutes does not cut it for a full length album)
Song(s) to Sample: "Marshmallow Bazooka"
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