Roxy Music
For Your Pleasure

THE REVIEW

For your pleasure. I could do anything, as long as you are satisfied. Rock as a choreography of one's own perversions, the body reduced to a manifesto of excess. It was the year 1973, and glam swallowed the attention of many, with its clichés taken to ever greater extremes, in a game of masochistic perversion. Traces of fetishism, unrestrained luxury, sexual ambiguity, all ingredients that we find in this second album by Roxy Music, where Brian Eno's participation stands out, having now become an integral part of the group. The cover splendidly introduces us to the music: (have you ever noticed that masterpieces almost always have beautiful artwork? Because artists know very well in which direction to go, they have clear ideas about what they want to achieve) In the background, a nocturnal metropolitan landscape illuminates a lithe Amanda Lear with a panther on a leash. Opening the record, you notice leader Brian Ferry watching her amusedly leaning against the door of his very luxurious Lincoln.

We start, just for the pleasure of it, with a masterpiece: "Do The Strand". A pounding piano and an impertinent sax provide the right frame to Ferry's hallucinating and self-satisfied vocals. The song plays on a continuous alternation of drums and piano that give a lively unpredictability. "Beauty Queen" still follows this line, with Ferry's singing more languid than ever, as the best glam tradition wants. Beware, though, Roxy Music never just “manifest”; there is a subtle and very sad self-irony in them. It's as if, swallowed by the dynamics of appearing, they can no longer escape. So to defend themselves, they use two ways: declaring cries for help ("Strictly Confidential", but especially the extraordinary "In Every Dream Home a Heartache") or flaunting their worldly sophistications ("Editions of You"). As if to say, since we're here, we might as well play until the end. The mood of the album unravels amidst this dichotomy. Everything here is summed up in one word "ambiguity". This attitude is summarized in truly sublime fashion by the ride of "Bogus Man", the true masterpiece of the album. A hallucinated journey in a nocturnal metropolis, amid neon lights and soul's shadows, between shiny asphalt and opaque self-perception, between reality and fiction, between forbidden games and nylon and silk malices. The refined and decadent title track, pervaded by a sense of incompleteness, of mystery, a melody that leaves you with an indescribable taste, closes the album.

Roxy Music were looking precisely for this, to make you feel sadly good.