Mmmmm Roxy Music. A ten year slab of deliciousness wrapped up in glam, electronics, ambience, lounge singing, and melodic rock. Spearheaded by the interplay between Bryan Ferry quavery voice, Brian Eno�s electronic wizardry (for the first two albums anyway), Phil Manzanera�s VERY underrated guitar playing, Andy Mackay�s woodwinds, Paul Thompson�s workmanlike drumming and finally the Random Rotation Roxy Music Bassist! �)
Their first album is a wonderful blend of glam, the future as seen through the eyes of the 50s and um rock? Really this album is hard to pigeonhole from its opening to its closing of samples from a party. The opening track �Remake/Remodel� is absolutely wonderful. Ferry�s voice modulates and croons like no tomorrow over wild sax and guitar interplay as Eno adds random bleeps and bloops all over the place. �Ladytron� is an eerie ballad with swirling oboes. �If There is Something� is a brilliant song of many parts, where Ferry has a supreme vox, where you learn to take seriously the line �Ill sit in the garden, growing potatoes by the score� if only because of the passion Ferry puts into it. �Virginia Plain� was the single and while not on the original album its included on this release. What a great song with its repeating beat and piano/ synth parts and lyrics of traveling around the globe. Roxy Music brings to mind the glamour of the 30s and 40s, and this song exemplifies that. �2HB� makes me cream my pants. MY GOD listen to that electric piano whatever the heck it is and that brilliant hiccuping lazy vocal and that stuttering drum beat. When the sax comes in on the chorus I�m in Heaven. Sure the lyrical content is cheesy, a tribute to Humphrey Bogart, but all the pieces fit together and are incredibly moving.
�The Bob (Medley)� is about the Battle of Britain and is a patchwork of different ideas from a glam rocking first part to an ambient part with sound effects of bombings and planes flying over. This leads into a sing along section which is more straight ahead garage type rock, which soon gives way to a piano which goes back to the beginning. Wow that was fun, although it is a bit bland, so I don�t know why I described it out like that. �Chance Meeting� brings us back to the good stuff. The song is bleak and filled with longing about meeting an old lover. The dissonant instrumental throughout adds to the depressing nature of the song. �Would You Believe?� is a great example of the mixing of 50s rock and the future. Ferry gives some great upper register vocals. I don�t know what it is, but it sounds so basic yet so out there, and different at the same time. The clunker, and of course there has to be a clunker, is the next song �Sea Breezes.� It lasts way too long, is a little numbing, and is mostly ambient and dissonant. While this is one of the first stepping stones for Eno�s ambient later work, its obviously a rough beginning. The album ends with the mutatnt doo woop of �Bitter�s End� with bizarre lyrics and to my ears beautiful offkey harmonies by the sax and onkey harmony in the vox. In the end this was the only way to end this bizarre marrigae of an album.
Final Comment: The child of a band�s unique vision of the glamour of the 40s with the glam movement of the 70s with the future of the 50s. Brilliant first side let down slightly by less developed second side. Still, Highly Recommended.
Score: ****
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