Vienna is the fourth studio album by British new wave band Ultravox, first released on 11 July 1980 through Chrysalis Records. Vienna was Ultravox's first album with their best-known line-up, after Midge Ure had taken over as lead vocalist and guitarist following the departures of John Foxx and Robin Simon, as well as the group's first release for Chrysalis. The album peaked at number 3 in the UK Albums Chart[13] and reached the top ten in Australia, New Zealand and several European countries.
Vienna was produced by German producer Conny Plank who had also produced Ultravox's previous album Systems of Romance, and mixed at Plank's studio near Cologne, Germany. Ultravox changed pace, style and audience with the arrival of Ure, who had already participated in the formation of Visage with Ultravox's keyboard and viola player Billy Currie. Many different styles are in use on the album; "Astradyne" is a long instrumental featuring sweeping, majestic synthesizer arrangements throughout, while "Mr. X" is a simpler, much sparser Kraftwerk pastiche. The lyrics to the album's songs were mainly written by Ure and drummer Warren Cann, who also takes a rare lead vocal on "Mr. X".
Four singles were released from the album. "Sleepwalk" was released as a single in June 1980, and was followed by "Passing Strangers" in September 1980, "Vienna" in January 1981 and "All Stood Still" in May 1981. "New Europeans" was used in a Japanese television commercial and released as a single in Japan, earning a gold disc.[14]
In terms of sales, the album had a slow start, but the release in January 1981 of the title track as the third single from the album heralded the band's commercial breakthrough worldwide and led to healthy sales throughout 1981.
American music publication Billboard named Vienna as one of its "recommended LPs" in August 1980.[31]Rolling Stone's Debra Rae Cohen was more critical and found that Ultravox "seem reduced to mimicking their earlier achievements", panning the album's "overblown arrangements" and "familiar and banal electronic effects."[24] Critic Robert Christgau dismissed Vienna as "dance music for the locked pelvis."[20]
Reviewing the 2000 reissue for Q, David Quantick called Vienna the band's "best album" and said that "there were fine singles such as 'Sleepwalk' and 'All Stood Still' and the title track which – like a cartoon hippo – remains pompous yet loveable."[22] Peter Kane's review of the deluxe version for Q eight years later was less favourable, describing the album as "sounding as cold and artificial as ever".[32]
Also reviewing the 2008 version, Mojo's David Buckley said that "[the title track]'s studied grandeur has aged far less well than the electro-rush of lead-off single 'Sleepwalk', the instrumental 'Astradyne', or the punishing riff-rock of 'New Europeans'. Ultimately, Vienna, with its winning formula of cold futurism and big rock textures, took Ultravox out of the margins and into the big-haired '80s mainstream."[33] Buckley was more complimentary in a 2020 reappraisal for Mojo, noting it as the album where Ultravox "transformed (or transmogrified, for many lovers of the original line-up) into chart contenders; nothing whatsoever wrong with that."[21]
AllMusic critic David Jeffries said, "There are plenty of pretentious and pompous moments at which Foxx-era purists cringe, but taken as a snooty rebellion against the guitar-heavy climate of the late '70s, they're ignorable... Add Anton Corbijn's photography and Peter Saville's smart cover design and all the ingredients for an early-'80s classic are there. A few albums later, it would all seem like a fluke, but on Vienna, all the pieces come together."[19]
