For Your Pleasure (1973)

"Do the Strand" The second Roxy Music album, and the last that Eno would be associated with (rumors of the time had it that Ferry was jealous of the attention Eno was getting, even coming eventually to relegate him to doing his thing in live performance from back at the soundboard), this tidy set continues apace the development of the art-rock unit's sound, at least as it existed in its first phase, which ran to approximately 1976: a thick blend of lead-footed texture, led by Bryan Ferry's perfectly ridiculous warbling, Andy Mackay's wailing reeds, all manner of odd plank and chizzle from keyboard and guitar (the latter courtesy Phil Manzanera), and Eno's electronic treatments and atmospherics, a strategy the band continued to build on even after he was gone. This is strange music even for its time—not that much to do with new wave or any of its antecedents, no matter what you might have heard, and in terms of style something even bigger and more ambitious than mere glam, something that set out to absorb and internalize and fetishize the artifice itself. As someone who was more a fan of Eno at the time (and incidentally Bryan Ferry's solo turns, which were covers projects), I had always assumed Roxy Music grew out of this bunch of yobs sitting around on hard chairs in studios feeling it out, after having first decided to unilaterally jettison even the vaguest gestures toward the blues or anything particularly rhythmic. It has that feel, and maybe that's the fact of it too, but then there's Bryan Ferry with all the credit for the songwriting, which I never noticed before. Is it an acquired taste? I suppose. And humorless, with no sense of history. But ultimately worth living with, a houseguest that can stay with you the rest of your life if you want. And, oh yeah, that's Bryan Ferry's girlfriend at the time on the cover, Amanda Lear.