Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 06/24/2008
Run Time: 45:37
Falling halfway between musical primitivism and
art rock ambition,
Roxy Music's eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of
rock's boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and
avant-pop,
Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures. Although no musician demonstrates much technical skill at this point, they are driven by boundless imagination --
Brian Eno's synthesized "treatments" exploit
electronic instruments as electronics, instead of trying to shoehorn them into conventional acoustic patterns. Similarly,
Bryan Ferry finds that his vampiric croon is at its most effective when it twists conventional melodies,
Phil Manzanera's guitar is terse and unpredictable, while
Andy Mackay's saxophone subverts
rock & roll clichés by alternating
R&B honking with atonal flourishes. But what makes
Roxy Music such a confident, astonishing debut is how these primitive
avant-garde tendencies are married to full-fledged songs, whether it's the free-form, structure-bending
"Remake/Remodel" or the sleek
glam of
"Virginia Plain," the debut single added to later editions of the album. That was the trick that elevated
Roxy Music from an art school project to the most adventurous
rock band of the early '70s.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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