While David Bowie was taking his alien glam-rock star Ziggy Stardust to a new level of female girls to croon over their rock star god, another band was about to take the art rock-era by storm with the release of this no hold barred self-titled debut of Roxy Music. They opened the flood-gates of shattering guitar and synth works, ’50s doo-wop ballads, and heavy sax solos. All from the mind of Bryan Ferry, Phil Manzanera, Andy MacKay, Paul Thompson, and Brian Eno, all of them had a combined force of unexpected moments that you’ll never get a chance to hear on any glam rock album that you’ve listened to from beginning to end.
Its songwriting and the cover of Kari-Ann on the front, seems to fit perfectly like a charm as it seems to go like an explosive device that never stops exploding. The opening of the sci-fi rockabilly Re-Make/Re-Model starts off as a diner-like scene with people taking their orders in an almost Brighton food court in the late ’50s and then the piano comes in as Ferry sings about childish behavior and being rebellious in the future to see a girl with the driver’s licenese number ‘CPL 593H’ as Phil’s guitar playing takes over the scales while Andy’s sax flirts away the scenery. The opus of various taste of music that opened up the door for the next moments that sound like a machine gun fire as of course to Bryan Ferry’s voice almost sounding like an english version of Elvis Presley.
If you thought that Re-Make/Re-Model was paying tribute to the cabaret scene in Germany and Paris with once again the rockabilly scene in America of the late ’50s, the rest of the self-titled debut album keeps on truckin’. Emotional ballads like Ladytron which features Eno’s mellotron of the sexual erotic lady coming in while Ferry sings about her while Andy does an eerie 4/4 time signature uptempo beat on the Oboe as Paul drums away to the tone including Phil doing some Frippish guitar work to close it up. If There Is Something, the 6‑minute piece, which is almost a song dedicated to Kari-Ann, starts off as a country-prog rock twang piece and then it becomes an atmospheric statement of a ballad transformation marriage style. The hit single Virginia Plain prog-punk compostion, a dedication to Robert E. Lee to become major stars to an homage to flying down to rio with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; the jazz upbeat sinister ballad dedicated to the 1942 classic Casablanca and its star, Humpherey Bogart, 2HB is a gem of a kind.
Another pasaging trouble piece of music that would make you get goosebumps are the three centerpieces of the album; The Bob (Medley) setting the scenery in a post-apocalyptic land that almost comes straight out of a Philip K. Dick story, combine it with its dark key signatures and Eno’s sound effects that would make it perfect for a movie soundtrack to come out of the early ’70s; Chance Meeting, Would You Believe?, and Sea Breezes which dealt with the gloomy and the sing-along rhythms of Bryan Ferry’s flashback of his days in school and to find romance that was almost weird and something that came out of a screenplay that the movie productions thought it was odd to make. The last track which almost could have been written in Paris in the late ’30s of the avant-garde scene, Bitters End which features the most of members doing the bop-bop lines while Ferry sings about life in Paris and the taste of Champange with its pink taste and the fate in this ballad.
Almost an early beginning of the punk scene, Roxy Music looked like the band that came out of the dead, looking cool with their art and glam looks to make it so fucking awesome. No wonder its still influencing the younger generation of fans to discover this genre of the Art Rock genre.