Roxy Music: Roxy Music

Roxy Music

Best song: Re-Make/Re-Model

Worst song: The Bob

Overall grade: 6

My second new artist for this week will be… Roxy Music! That’s pretty exciting, as is this album. Every time I listen to either of the first two Roxy albums, I feel like I’m discovering them for the first time, almost like Eno and Ferry are changing the music each time you hear it, just to mess with your head and make you feel like you’re listening to something entirely different. Still, it’s always just as good, and I love the feeling it gives me, like I’m venturing into the unknown.

So. Roxy Music was formed by Bryan Ferry between 1970 and 1971 after he’d failed to win his audition for King Crimson (can you imagine if he had won?!) and was originally supposed to have Davy O’List, that guy from the Nice, on guitars, but he quit before this album was recorded. I can see how he would have been drawn to the band in the first place and I like to imagine him playing this album at home just after its release, sick with jealousy. The band picked up their second choice, Phil Manzanera, and almost immediately they were ready to start recording.

Of course, what makes this album brilliant is the perfect balance between the indulgent, high-society glam-rock that Ferry writes and the general insane weirdness that Brian Eno brings to the table. To see this in action, you need look no further than the opening track ‘Re-Make/Re-Model’. It opens with a recording of a large room of people talking, and a guy tapping on the side of his glass, as if he’s going to make a speech. This song is the speech. Dripping with mellotron and saxophone, this song actually rocks really hard, which you wouldn’t expect if you only knew the band’s later albums. It also shows just how smart this band is. They wanted to prove they weren’t just your everyday glam rock band, and so included a bunch of little references to other pieces from all genres and periods of music. You can listen out for ‘Day Tripper’, but there’s a bunch of others too, and I’m sure I’ve missed some.

Moving swiftly on, we have ‘Ladytron’. The beginning melody always reminds me a little of ‘Outside the Wall’, but predates it by about 7 years, so that’s impossible. Anyway, this song donated its name to a British electronic band years in 1999, which gives an idea of how ahead of its time and futuristic-sounding it was. Repetitively synthy and containing a wonderfully eclectic mix of sounds and emotions, Bryan Ferry’s acquired-taste voice is not yet the central aspect of the band’s sound – it’s just used to add flavour. (And when I say acquired taste, I mean in the exact OPPOSITE way that, say, Jon Anderson is an acquired taste.)

There’s a little descending guitar line that opens ‘If There Is Something’ and it’s awesome. Mostly, I like the song because it includes the country and blues-rock influences that so many prog and art-rock bands of the time completely rejected, and proves that these styles can make interesting, inventive music too.

Eno lets Ferry take the lead on ‘2H.B.’, the latter’s tribute to famous film star Humphrey Bogart. It’s a quietly timeless track that wouldn’t sound out of place at a late night intimate soiree, and creates an entirely different atmosphere to the early tracks, and it is all atmosphere, except for the vocals and electric piano that carry the song through. Did I mention the other King Crimson tie-in? This album is produced by Peter Sinfield, and now that he’s not let loose on the lyrics, he does a good job – this song in particular stands out with its pensive production.

Sadly, opening side two is the album’s only real flaw. It just seems like such a waste! There are a LOT of good musical ideas in ‘The Bob’, but for whatever reason – laziness, time constraints, lack of ideas, whatever – their chances of becoming full songs was stolen from underneath them, and they were all thrown together in this, a song that, every time you get into it, abruptly changes and throws you off course, leaving you disappointed.

Ferry must be a big movie buff, because I’ve heard ‘Chance Meeting’ is some kind of homage to the film ‘Brief Encounter’. I’ve never seen it, so when I listen to the song I more think about the spacey, endless sax notes and how they work with the wash of smooth vocals and the short, fast, evenly spaced piano plinking.‘Would You Believe’ is, at first, a beautiful jazzy ballad that abruptly picks up the pace and becomes something that makes you want to get up and dance, getting faster and culminating in a fast-paced solo before a gorgeous lament of an ending.

To finish is ‘Sea Breezes’, which is mostly quiet and minimalistic, and I’ve also heard it described as peaceful – but I’ve always heard a kind of creepy undertone, something a little shady going on just beneath the surface. And then ‘Bitters End’, which is a short, fun coda to the album that has another good sax part and an informal, winding-down feel to it.

The first side of this album is worthy of a 7 for sure. The second side is still extremely high quality, although not quite in the same league as it’s a little more safe and mainstream-sounding,  and if it wasn’t for ‘The Bob’ I’d be happy to put this as one of my very favourite records. Still highly recommended and the opening track is probably your best starting point with the band, if you’re art-music inclined at all.