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While their debut album gave glimpses of brilliance, mostly stacked onto its first side, with For Your Pleasure, it seems as if Roxy Music had truly, irrevocably arrived. Their second album radiated with a true confidence, and a songwriting and arranging excellence now pouring forth like a breached dam. Opening with attitude to spare, Bryan Ferry's "Do the Strand" is a celebration and deconstruction of that beloved social phenomenon: the dance craze. From here, this is a rock album that takes the ball and runs with it-past the end zone, past the stadium seats, and somewhere into the next county, never looking back. Until the band is inevitably swallowed in the echo-vortex of the closing title track, they don't discard the possibilities. The music is fresh, interesting, and consistently surprising. I love the way "Strand" builds up tension in its verses-the staccato keys and Mackay's dissonant sax, wailing as if giving birth-only to release it in the chorus. Or consider the next track, "Beauty Queen": the enigmatic, pulsating prelude on electric piano; the way it resurfaces after Ferry's casual verses, detouring the song into a heavier, sped-up Manzanera-guided middle; the song's abrupt ending with no warning or fanfare. The melodrama of "Strictly Confidential" sees Ferry donning his doomed Euro Romantic persona, a harbinger of future tunes "A Song for Europe" and "Bittersweet." Of course, it also must be mentioned that For Your Pleasure is the 'dark' Roxy Music album, a reputation instilled primarily from two incredible tracks. It might be enough to simply call "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" one of the greatest black comedy rock songs of all time, but I think that would be a bit of a cop out. The song has more to it than that, with Ferry conveying picket fences image of idyllic living as a cover for profound emotional isolation and empty gratification. The song's robotic colorings are the perfect match for its content, and take the tension-release of "Strand" to an even greater level, leading to an explosion with Manzanera and Thompson leading the charge, as if to suggest the violent release of urges repressed for too long. Then, there's "Bogus Man," Roxy's own special Halloween nursery rhyme. The song is noteworthy for the plodding fullness of Paul Thompson's snare and hi-hat and the steadiness of the bass line, all suggesting the relentless patience of the title character. Also incredible is Ferry's dissonant falsetto combined with mellotron, and the little interweavings of sound between Manzanera, Eno and the rest of the band after Ferry's vocals have long shuffled off from the song. "Grey Lagoons" is one of Roxy Music's most underrated, with a beautiful melody, touch of gospel influence, and echoes of "Beauty Queen"'s structure with a sped-up, rockier middle. The album closes with the enigmatic, superb title track. Always a favorite, I am glad that they resurrected this comparative obscurity to close out their reunion gigs. Bryan Ferry in these days was, in my opinion, one of rock's best lyricists. Here he is in top form. Just a few examples of short phrases from this album that have stuck in my mind throughout the many years: "Dance on moonbeams/ Slide on rainbows/ In furs or blue jeans/ You know what I mean..." "We're incognito/ Down the Lido," "Swaying palms at your feet/ You're the pride of your street" "Satin teardrops on velvet lights/ Morning sickness on Friday nights," "So if life is a table/ And fate is the wheel/ Then let the chips fall where they may." My absolute favorite comes at the very end of the album. It is amazing to me how Ferry's lyrics convey a sense of hopefulness, possibly despair and death, and above all mystery and change, simultaneously and with an impressive economy of phrase: "In the morning/ Things you worried about last night/ Will seem lighter/ I hope things will turn out right/ Old Man-through every step a change/ You watch me walk away/ Tara tara...." The debut would be a dress rehearsal for a great production, but For Your Pleasure is the opening night. It demonstrates just what a very true and sublime art form that rock music could be, with a bit of imagination and charisma. But you blew my mind, indeed. review by Joe McGlinchey — 12-29-05 —

m a t t

For Your Pleasure is Roxy Music's dark album. I don't think it has a consecutive run of songs on it as immediately impressive as the great first five on the debut, but I find it as a whole to be more consistent and even better overall. The band still wrote solid pop hooks (I think "Do the Strand" and "Editions of You" are as good almost anything on the debut) but they displayed a greater interest in developing other sides of their sound. On the previous album, the band had more ideas than quality material in which to incorporate them (a problem that I think marred a few songs on the second half of that record). That isn't an issue here, as the band had honed their strengths since last being in the studio. For Your Pleasure has the fingerprints of Brian Eno all over much of it. He had become a cult figure with audiences and this likely led to a more prominent role in the studio (which probably also contributed to the irreconcilable creative differences with Bryan Ferry). Even the tunes that seem most obviously Ferry's sound manipulated by Eno in some way, whether it's that extra blare and dissonance on "Do the Strand," the wild synthesizer solo on "Editions of You" or the brilliantly processed guitar which carries the otherwise girl-groupish "Beauty Queen," thereby creating one of Roxy Music's most effective juxtapositional clashes. But Eno is really let loose on the second half of the album. The noir-ishly atmospheric "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" captures the Brian Eno era of Roxy Music perfectly. Over minimal musical accompaniment, Ferry croons achingly about his erotic obsessions; in this particular case, an inflatable doll. It all leads to a classic moment when Ferry sings the lyric "I blew up your body," music halts and he then murmurs "...but you blew my mind," after which a brief pause is punctured viciously by some wild guitar soloing, taking the creepy confessional to an entirely different level. I should probably make clear at this point that there is virtually nothing about the content of this song — or a good deal other of Roxy Music's songs — that on paper would normally make me the least bit interested in hearing it. I'm really not sure how Roxy Music managed to avoid descending into total campiness, but, to my ears, they rarely ever did. I think this album has many pleasures and I find that none of them make me feel guilty. Then there's "The Bogus Man," the most "prog" that the band ever got. It's a warped nine minute vamp with repetetive, chant-like vocals about being chased by the Bogeyman. Eno manipulates Ferry's voice, multi-tracking and treating it, getting it to sound thin and sickly. Eno then fills out the rest of jam with squonking noises and mellotron shades, and he gives Phil Manzanera's guitar a sticky, needle-point quality. This was a one-of-a-kind item in Roxy Music's history and it provides a glimpse at what their future might have sounded like had Eno remained in the band. The bizarreness is given a momentary reprieve with the straightforward, lighthearted "Grey Lagoons." I like the song a lot; it sounds vaguely gospel-inflected and I think it has one of most attractive melodies in the band's catalog. It's just too bad that it has an instrumental break in which the mood switches from a genuine elegance to an old-timey rock and roll boogie. Such a move could have worked on a song that courted camp to begin with or which had tongue in cheek, but "Grey Lagoons'" lack of irony makes it an undesireable candidate for such treatment. Eno is back to his tricks on the album's finale, the forboding, atmospheric title track. The tune is drawn out well past its final verses and by all accounts should be considered padding at nearly seven minutes. But Eno controls the tension superbly, building it up until nearly all that is left are drumrolls, a fractured piano and his quivering, looped synthesizers. Then these sounds are replaced by industrial noises and voices that eventually fade out. It's a great way to end an excellent album. review by Matt P. — 9-8-05 —