Roxy Music
For Your Pleasure

THE REVIEW

Preamble: I will probably disavow most of the considerations expressed in this review in a few days.

My relationship with Roxy Music is tumultuous, and for years I have consciously avoided them.

How can one give credit to a slick crooner surrounded by beautiful women singing "Slave To Love"!

With caution, however, I began to engage with them, always keeping a way out behind my back. And unexpectedly, I encountered one of the albums that has been fundamental in defining me as a listener: "For Your Pleasure."

To play this work in order: the bassist of Roxy Music (a random session-man), Andrew MacKay (an excellent multi-instrumentalist), Paul Thompson (who seems like a drum-basher but instead...), Phil Manzanera (a Creole guitarist with Canterbury influences), Brian Eno (an extraterrestrial whose mere presence can unsettle any score).

Leading them with a steel nerve, a Genius in Tuxedo: BRIAN FERRY.

"For Your Pleasure" is an alchemical work where the High meets the Low and lead transforms into gold. The tracks are both déjà-vus and archetypes. Many previous musical genres can find a home here, and at the same time, the album anticipates the future. Kitsch merges with the avant-garde.

The tracks are excellent: from the hyperkinetic "Do The Strand" and "Editions Of You," to the introspective confession of "Strictly Confidential," from the "balera" slow dance of "Beauty Queen" to the rock’n’roll standard of "Grey Lagoon." Completely apart is the unbridled and indefinable experimentalism of "Bogus Man." Closing the album, the ethereal and visionary "For Your Pleasure," which ends in a mysterious tribalism and evokes Tara, the sacred hill of the Celts. In every track, each member of the group contributes creatively with the benevolent consent of the Company owner. Nestled in the middle of the long-playing, a miracle bordering on Dadaist cabaret: "In Every Dream Home A Heartache." The first part is dominated by Mackay's keyboard and especially by Brian Eno's loops supporting Ferry's feverish singing. In a hypnotic crescendo, the Genius with the pomade narrates the perverse love of a newly-rich parvenu for his inflatable doll. At the peak of the insane confession, Manzanera's brutal solo erupts, one of the most devastating and definitive in the entire history of Rock.

Nothing is left to chance and the cover immortalizes Amanda Lear unleashing a black panther, an immortal icon that even ensnared the restless soul of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti.

We are at the pinnacle of a creative process that unfortunately will be partly lost with Eno's departure, partly with Ferry's clear intention to progressively surrender to the mainstream and its promises of money and girls in lamé.

From here begins another story in which, however, the Genius in Double-breasted has reserved the privilege of delivering us scattered gems in a repertoire of refined and extremely professional songwriting.

Even "Slave To Love" gets stuck in your ears……...