Opener You Can Dance is menacingly forceful, as slabs of gargantuan silver screen guitar slice through rambling synths with Blade Runner ferocity, whilst Alphaville unites bass slump with Bond soundtrack sophistication. Heartache By Numbers, co-written by Shears & co. is less cinematic, more melancholic, as ebony and ivory gush with a pulse comparable to that throbbing within Lifeblood-era Manic Street Preachers, before a chorus equivocally evocative of a certain Duran Duran home run hit bats any lingering emotion into the upper echelons of stratospheric stadium euphoria. Me Oh My recalls the emotively affecting Avalon of '82, and is irrefutably as sumptuous as gazing out over watercolour clouds from the sun-soaked wings of a Boeing 747, Bloody Mary in hand, whilst Reason Or Rhyme, with its intrinsically Floydian theatrics is rudimentarily staggering, Ferry wading through voluptuous balladry as if his out-of-court marriage settlement depends on his conviction. On this display, he'd wind up with half of everything at the very least. Closer Tender Is The Night, above splintered static radio samples is all but shrouded in cliché, veiled in predictability, whilst the Groove Armada ecstasy-imbued romp Shameless is just that, Ferry skulking in the realms of faceless house vocalist, albeit one with a little more vivaciousness than Gary Pine for instance. An oboe-endowed Tim Buckley cover, Song To The Siren is as seductive as an M&S meal deal, if ever so slightly superfluous, whilst the slapped and spanked bass of BF Bass (Ode To Olympia) invokes preoccupations of potential pending hip replacements as the BPM becomes substantially less geriatric. If not the fake sound of progress, Olympia certainly showcases Ferry as a true gentleman, aging in utterly unadulterated dignity.
