Roxy Music
Siren

THE REVIEW

If Oscar Wilde had ever founded a rock band, it would probably be very similar to Roxy Music.

Few other bands can boast such a daring blend of experimentation and melody search that captivates at first listen, always teetering between intellectual ambition and frivolity.

Not many have had the boldness to incestuous unite rock with jazz, prog, and electronics, in an imaginary world of (fake) decadence, pseudoeroticism (see the suggestive covers), glamorous elegance, and most importantly a lot of (self)irony; positioning themselves in some ways as a link between the progressive school of the '70s and the new wave.

After the first two masterpiece albums in collaboration with Brian Eno, Roxy Music gradually began to simplify their sound, gradually reducing the instrumental digressions and the more blatantly experimental parts with each album, without losing their ability and desire to amaze, shifting towards a (partly) more canonical art rock that flirts with pop, yet always refined, distinctive, and of high quality.

Within the band's discography, this album certainly does not represent one of the peaks (respectively the first two albums for the "cultured" phase and Avalon for the so-called "commercial" one) and is often snubbed by early fans, a perhaps excessively critical judgment compared to the actual merits of the album in question. In fact, not insignificantly, listening to it offers us a handful of elegant and highly enjoyable refined art-pop songs whose quality remains, needless to say, abundantly above average, especially if we were to make an unhappy comparison with the barely golden mediocrity of the sea of current offerings.

Sly and indulgent album in short, but a perfect soundtrack for your dandy evenings in which to sink into excess and perdition. (3.5/5)