Anyway, the topic at immediate hand is the first side, which kicks off with sounds of party conversation for half a minute before a simple piano line abruptly breaks in and leads the band into "Re-make/Re-model," which starts off seemingly kind like a slightly generic rocker but soon brings in all sorts of cool guitar and synth and saxophone noises. Ferry manages to predict David Byrne half a decade in advance with his "Talk talk talk talk talk myself to death" line, the band works in the "give every member a brief moment to play alone" cliche in the most interesting way possible (*BZZZZZZEEEEEEEAAOOOOOOOOOOOTTTT*), and oh man those wild guitar and sax wailings over the 4/4 rhythm section are interesting. And they follow it with something almost completely different, "Ladytron," which has one of the best icy-cold atmospheres I've heard in forever (best synth+oboe combination ever), and which has Ferry alternating an amazingly sad (and untrivial) verse melody with a slightly upbeat chorus that doesn't sound at all out-of-place in context.

And then there's "If There is Something," which may very well be the most densely packed and varied 6-minute song in my whole collection. First, you think it's gonna be an upbeat country pop ballad ... then you think it's gonna be a downbeat country ballad ... then it morphs into this UNBELIEVABLY dark, moody thing with an incredible Ferry delivery about "growing potatoes by the scooooore" with this cold, stately atmosphere and a never-changing deathly drum beat and the moody sax solo to end all moody sax solos. And oh man, that has got to be one of the most perfect distant, echoey piano sounds imaginable. And it ends with Ferry coming back and wailing as only he can, the perfect crowning touch.

It's kinda hard to follow something like that, but the band does a decent job of it on the rest of the first side, both in the bizarre/straightforward "Virginia Plain" (which apparently wasn't on the album originally, but instead was a single) and in the murky "2.H.B," with a cool moody verse melody, a great electric piano and some nice sax atmosphere. Unfortunately, though, the album goes off a cliff right about when "The Bob (Medley)" pops in. They're obviously trying to make a sort of counterpoint to "If There is Something," but the intermittent singing is so ugly and the atmosphere so unattractive and the instrumental parts so boring that I can't like it much at all.

And the rest? Meh. "Chance Meeting" and "Sea Breezes" are moody, yes, but the first side had moods and tunes, whereas these songs just kinda sit there and refuse to grab me. "Would You Believe?" is a little nicer, as it's kinda warm and inviting (when it's not trying to break into their futuristic 50's-rock shtick, which would be done to perfection on "Editions of You" but is only sorta done well here, to my ears), and the closing "Bitters End" is too cute and inoffensive to be a source of scorn, but still, they don't really do much to redeem the last 20 minutes.

Overall, this is a tough album to rate, considering that I have to balance adoring the first half with feeling indifferent to (at best) and hating (at worst) the second half. Still, my love of this album is of a lot greater magnitude than my hate of this album (even if I really hate parts of this album a lot), so I guess it's an A instead of a 9. Maybe. My advice is to buy it, but to just put the whole first side on a self-made Roxy Music compilation.

Besides, this is the album that has my absolute favorite Roxy Music song in the world, the one that first really grabbed me. Granted, this is partially because of my fond memories of hearing "Editions of You" the first time, listening to it in a car with Rich Bunnell, Mike DeFabio and Mike Pap Rocki during a dark driving rainstorm and watching Mike D put on the greatest "air-knob-twiddling" performance ever during Eno's synth noisefest in the middle. But even beyond that, this thing rocks like nobody's business; along with Eno's own "King's Lead Hat," this is the greatest example I can imagine of futuristic sci-fi 50's piano boogie, with wailing knob-twiddling and guitar and sax madness over a relentlessly pounding beat prefaced with an awesome electric piano line. And Ferry? "And as I was drifting past the Lorelei, I heard the slinky sirens wail, *WHOOO*" "Learn from your mistakes is my only advice, and stay cool is still the main rule. Don't play yourself for a fool; too much cheesecake too soon; old money's better than new; no mention in the latest Tribune; and don't let this happen to you." MAN.

I'm also thoroughly in love with the opening "Do the Strand," which features an awesome creepy nagging piano line and Ferry growling out some lyrics about the new dance, the "strrrrrrrraaaand." This song is also notable for, except for "EofU," being the only start-to-finish uptempo song in a sea of dark atmospheric numbers. "Beauty Queen" is a nice eerie number that would actually bore me were it not for Ferry's terrific delivery and the echoey processed-guitar sound that pop up in the background from time to time, "Strictly Confidential" is more dark atmosphere saved by Ferry, "Grey Lagoons" is dancey but not that enjoyable, and the closing title track is just strange. It's this fascinatingly bizarre mix of Ferry vocals coming and going and weird chanting voices far in the back and weird synth noises and piano notes bouncing around and holy cow is it interesting.

That leaves us with "In Every Dream Home a Heartache." It's amazing to me, really, that Ferry and Eno are able to make this thing sound so dreary and stately and dark, and make it seem at first that I'm about to take in something very deep, what with the serious "atmosphere," and then *keep* this atmosphere going even as Ferry keeps rambling and you start to realize with horror just where he's going with this. Man, any band that can make a song about *this* (and if you don't know what it is, I'm going to make you look it up) so majestic right up to the moment where the music stops and Ferry goes "...but you blew my mind" is alright by me. And dig the "majestic" guitar soloing in the coda!

Man, this album is great. It might seem like I brushed over a good chunk of the album a little too casually, and thus perhaps don't care for it, but that's not really true; it's just that I kinda see those songs as "tablesetters" for the main reasons to buy this. And believe me, you should buy this if you have any interest in Roxy and/or Eno (who would leave right after this album).

This album is so slick and rich that it's amazing to realize that these guys were among the first people in rock to do anything along these lines. Yeah, I can hear the "blah blah blah innovation has no bearing on how good an album is" people now, but look; it's one thing to follow a cliche, it's quite another to invent a cliche. Furthermore, it's quite yet another to invent a cliche and use it at such a high quality level that it becomes obvious why so many people would have taken notice of it and latched onto it. This is now Ferry's band, and Ferry's singing on this album spans so many emotions and styles that he basically ensures this album a D on his own. It's possible that the opening "Street Life" would pass me by if the instrumental track were done by a different band with a different singer; as is, the hilarious inflections he comes up with "It can take. you. highYA than the Milky Waaaaaaaaay" and with "It can make you. feel. like you're losing your miiiiiiiiiiind" and with "loooooooooving yooou is all I can doooooooooooooooo" are enough to make it a classic. It is entirely possible that without his pleading falsetto I'd find "Just Like You" boring, an average piece of "romantic" fluff, but there's no chance of that happening in what ends up as an emotional classic. It's entirely probable that I'd find the un-ironic gospel of "Psalm" (especially at 8 minutes) unbearably dull if sung by somebody else, but here it just seems terrific.

I don't wish to give the impression, though, that this album is nothing but a piece of crap that's rescued by good singing (as I'm realizing could be inferred by my phrasing in the previous paragraph). "Amazona" stands out a little more than the rest, as it starts as a fun bit of latin dance-boogie (or whatever you want to call it), then goes into a slower croony part, and then gives time for Phil to pull out the sort of "flushing" guitar sound that comes from more processing than what's given to a tax return from somebody claiming his pet rock as a dependent. My favorite use of this sound would actually come later on "King's Lead Hat," but given that he combines this sound with an absolutely astounding adrenaline-pumping guitar break, this has got to rank right up there. And then back to the original latin sound, except with Phil keeping the sound going. Yeah.

The first three songs of the second half are all almost as good, though. "Serenade" is a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I say this album is "rich;" the pianos and guitars and whatever are given a perfect amount of echo, not to mention that it seems like there are layers upon layers of them supporting Ferry's croon. And man, there's just something extra moving to me about that little Ferry middle 8, though I don't really know why ... Anyway, "Song For Europe" is extremely dark and decadent and mournful, a mode that Ferry can seemingly do excellently even in his sleep, and even the parts of him singing/talking in Latin and French work marvelously. And man, those are some really moody saxes going off while he goes off into foreign language land.

Then there's "Mother of Pearl," which starts off as an up-tempo, fairly aggressive rocker with all sorts of chaotic Ferry overdubs ("comingroundthecornerWHOOOOOOOOO"), before settling into a slow piano-based ballad with Ferry singing/emoting marvelously (as usual). And oh man, that's one amazing chorus, and it's especially nice that the coda is nothing but a couple of overdubs of Ferry singing, "Oh mother of pearl, I wouldn't trade you for another girl" again and again.

Of course, the closing "Sunset" sucks, as it's really dull and really long (though it's ok as a mood piece), but that's just one blotch on an otherwise mostly-impeccable album. When I finished listening to this album for the first time, and I sat for a bit taking it all in, I realized very quickly why it was that so many (Even Eno, supposedly and surprisingly) have eagerly deemed this as their favorite Roxy album. Many others have tried to make many songs and albums like this, but few have come close to matching the richness and candor and just plain goodness of this. Get this first.

The lower rating than usual doesn't just come from the album cover, though. Yes, the band was still basically in its prime, and the songs are still basically idiosyncratic and moody and rocking and whatever. Despite all this, however, I get a "going through the motions" vibe from this album that I don't get from the first three or from its successor. Out of the ten songs on here, there are two ("The Thrill of it All," "Prairie Rose") that I consider a lock for inclusion in my imaginary 'best-of' for the band, with one other going into the "probably included" pile ("Out of the Blue"). Otherwise, there's not a song on here that I consider essential, even if it's also true that I don't consider any of the songs out-and-out bad. They're just ... ok.

The six-minute "The Thrill of it All," though, is way way beyond ok, as it's easily one of my five favorite tracks from the band. It rocks in a much more stripped-down way than anything from the first three albums (a pattern that gets carried on the whole album), with just Eddie Jobson's violin (this is his first album with the band) contributing to a standard guitar-bass-drums-piano setup (with some very low-mixed sax in the slower part), but whatever I may miss in the sound is more than made up for by Ferry. No, really: it may seem redundant at this point to single out a great Ferry vocal performance, but this is Ferry's performance of performances (though I have to admit that I didn't really understand why so many people regarded this as much after I'd just listened to it once). The dirgey "ooooooooooooh"'s in the introduction and the longer instrumental breaks, the pleading in the slower parts (with those falsetto backing "calling you calling you calling calling you..."' parts), the phrasings in the verses ... At first, I wasn't particularly impressed, as I my thoughts were basically, "Oooh, he's emotional and heartbroken here, big deal, he's that way all the time." It took being away from the song for a while, having it suddenly pop into my head as I was grocery shopping at Jewel Osco (the Illinois area version of Albertsons, for you non-midwesterners), for it to hit me just how unbelievably gut-wrenching Ferry manages to come across in this song. This is something everybody should hear at some point, Roxy fan or not.

The closing "Prairie Rose" is also really great. I used to just consider it a decent rocker, but now I think the song is awesome in every way, from the main riff, to the vocal melody, to the great upward slide guitars in the chorus, to the great instrumental breaks, to the anthemic coda driven forward by the great piano riff that was there all along. Glorious.

Beyond this, though, it's eight tracks of a relative letdown. I'm fond of "Out of the Blue" because of the really neat backwards violin solo and the cool sounds in the introduction of the violin playing off the bass, but even the rest of this song seems standard, "unenlightening" if you will. "All I Want is You" is a decent rocker, as is "Casanova" (which at least has a clavinet, giving that nice 70's sleaze sound); there's some sorta countryish pop-rock ("Three and Nine," "If it Takes All Night," where Ferry shows that country just isn't one of his strengths); there's a track where Ferry reminds me way too much of Jim Morrison ("Bitter Sweet"); there's an ok harpsichord-laced "medieval" ballad ("Triptych"), and .. Uh, there's one more track and I can't remember what it is right now, so I won't bother to try. I mean, none of these songs suck, and they're all decent enough while on, but even after a lot of listens, I can't say any of these strike me as a "lost classic" or anything like that.

So basically, this is a collection of "kinda, sorta good" songs that just happens to also have two of Roxy's best songs ever and one of their trippiest. If you're a big fan of the band, you might love this, but if you're not I'd say you'd be just as well off finding the best songs on a compilation and leaving the rest alone.

That's not to say I don't like the sound of the album, of course. It's just that I'm of the mindset that the sound works not because it's stripped and dancable, but rather works because it still sounds like this stripped and dancable music is being made by a freaking great band. The band is still tight as can be, the drum sound is terrific for this kind of music (for whatever reason, which I'm still not sure of, the drums are the first thing that really caught my ear on this album), and Ferry is still at the top of his game (much more consistently so than on Country, if you ask me). Furthermore, the sound is perfect for the "post-breakup debauchery" theme that runs through the album, and it makes the great pleadings and croonings come that much more alive.

Actually, come to think of it, the "dance pop" (or funk or disco or whatever) reputation this album has is kinda overstated, as there are only three tracks out of nine that I think would really qualify. Ironically, for all my rantings about funkiness not automatically improving something, these are my three favorite tracks on the album, though in a different order from how most tend to order them. Believe it or not, the infamous opening "Love is the Drug" is only my third favorite on the album; this of course means that it's a great song, with a fine bassline and amusing lyrics about needing to score his fix, but I honestly don't find it as addictive as so many others do. "She Sells," on the other hand, gets a no-hesitation thumbs up from me. What makes this song so great in my eyes is that, as overpowering as the funk breaks in the middle might be (and oh man, do they groove, accentuated by the great saxophone lines that had become underutilized by this time), they are *not* the main feature of the song, which is formed around this great sorta sleazy vaudeville piano theme and Ferry alternating a bizarre (even by his standards) croon with other great parts like where he goes into that robotic "con-sum-ing you con-sum-ing meeeeee" part. Oh man what a great song.

In my world, though, all on Siren bows down before the might of "Both Ends Burning." This is a disco-rocker that does both aspects proud, with great sounding background synth noises and a relentless groove that grabs me and never lets go (and believe me, it takes a lot for a dancable groove to grab me) while Ferry pulls out some more absolutely amazing vocal hooks. Look, I know it'll never happen, but if ever comes the day where I'm allowed to be a DJ for one evening, there is no doubt in mind that this would be the song I'd choose to be the closing send-off, as I really can't think of any song that would be better suited. I can also say that, on the Roxy Music compilation I made for myself, this was a hands-down choice to close it out, as it does an amazing job of leaving me wanting more (and wanting to put the compilation back on, natch).

There are six other songs on here, and they're mostly good. I could live without the really awkward, schmaltzy "Could it Happen to Me?" (possibly the WORST choice to stick between "She Sells" and "Both Ends Burning," as is the case here), but that's the only one I can gripe about. "End of the Line" is first-rate nostalgia (and with a great 'home-on-the-range' style harmonica to boot), "Whirlwind" is a marvelous pop-rocker whose opening gives Phil his best moment on the album (the wall-of-sound strummed distortion, I mean), "Nightingale" is a decent ballad, and "Just Another High" is pretty much the perfect philosophical end to the album (basically it's "great, the buzz is wearing off, and I'm still lonely. I miss her"). Oh, there's also "Sentimental Fool," which opens with a long stretch of creepy Eno-ish and Fripp-ish noises before going into another nice ballad with more nice vocals...

Ok, so the album isn't exactly spectacular outside of the three main highlights, big deal. It's really good, though, and those high points are easily high enough to guarantee this thing a C. Which is a lot more than I can say for the album that came into being after the band took a lengthy break ...

I've listened to this a bunch of times, and can only vaguely sort things out in my head. I know that the opening title track is way too dull for being as long as it is, I know that "Angel Eyes" sucks like mad, I know that "Ain't That So" has some bits that stick out a little, and I know that there are fairly lengthy stretches where the album works as inoffensive background noise. But sheesh, if you've read this site enough, you know that it takes a lot to limit my ability to yammer on and on about random esoteric details about whatever, even in stuff I don't like. This album just does almost nothing to stand out, and while that may not be an unpardonable sin on an absolute level, that is pretty much the unpardonable sin for Roxy Music. This is just a disgrace.

That said, I like this somewhat more than Manifesto. For whatever reason, this album strikes me as having a lot more work and effort going into it than does Manifesto; put another way, this sounds a lot more like music than does Manifesto, which seems a lot more like muzak than music to me. Yes, it's slick in all the bad ways that characterize 80's Euro-dance rock (Roxy have stooped to imitating all the bands making a poor imitation of the Stranded sound, sigh), but at least I can listen to most of it without puking all over myself.

Most of it, anyways. There's a spectacularly bad cover of "Eight Miles High" on here, with all the trippiness and edge completely removed (and, sadly enough, the lyrics actually stand out as kinda stupid without the right context), and it serves as a good reminder of why so many great 60's and 70's artists fell flat on their faces at the turn of the decade. There's also a couple of "original" tracks that fall into the standard crappy early 80's music category ("No Strange Delight" and especially "Same Old Scene"), the kind of music that gives a bad name to a time period that had as much great music made as in basically any other period.

On the other hand, the opening cover of "At the Midnight Hour" is acceptable lightweight fun (and the opening count-in is kinda neat, though Sting would do it better on "Invisible Sun" the next year), "Oh Yeah" has a lovely nostalgic feel (that chorus is very nice), the title track is nice (though I should admit that it almost sounds like Trevor Rabin singing a pop song with the "Hot Blooded" riff, even if Trevor wouldn't make music like this for a few years), "My Only Love" is atmospheric in a good way, and the closing "Running Wild" has all sorts of great guitar ambience to go with a nice chorus and decent singing. They're not anything extremely special (there's a reason why I can just mention them all in one sentence without extensively describing them), but they're all acceptable early 80's mainstream pop, at least to the extent that "acceptable" can be used as an adequate adjective for that genre.

If this review gives off a "damning with faint praise" vibe to you, there's a reason for it. I can pat this album on the head and go "Oooh, that's a nice song, good for you!" in the same way I would go "Wow, that's a great drawing of an airplane, you're a great artist" to a five year-old who can't actually draw worth a damn yet, but it's really disappointing to have to stoop to that level with a band like Roxy. Get it only if you're a completist.

Quite a few of the songs on here can easily stand up as among the best tracks the band ever did (which is definitely something that couldn't be said on the last two albums), at least when you get past the temptation to hold it to the same stylistic standard of Stranded. The opening "More Than This" sounds, as seemingly everybody points out, just like the sort of thing one would hear on the early 80's Moody Blues albums, and as somebody who loves the best material of Long Distance Voyager and The Present, that's a good start. I actually think that Ferry's voice here sounds a lot more like that of John Lodge than of Justin Hayward, but the song style is definitely in the vein of the kind of song Justin's been writing and rewriting since the early 80's (not that I'm complaining about that, as I like well-done late-period Hayward way more than I probably should), with nice synth washes and tasteful guitar and a great chorus and all that rot.

The title track is disturbingly seductive (especially whenever it gets to that descending synth sequence followed by Ferry singing the title with female backing), "While My Heart is Still Beating" does a good job of crossing a pseudo-rhythmic "smooth jazz" a/c feel (bleh) with just enough real erieness (like with that quick ascending piano part and other things of that nature) to make it enjoyable, and "Take A Chance with Me" has an introduction that sounds to me like a disturbing cross between the typical album sound and bits of solo Steve Hackett (I swear that some of those guitar sounds are exactly the same sort of thing I hear in "Shadow of the Hierophant") before going into a nice pop song (with a great chorus) with a great nagging moody guitar line in the background. I also find myself having a great deal of fondness towards "The Space Between," which sounds just enough like Synchronicity-era Police (or maybe very early solo Sting, before he went totally off the deep end), with its funky bassline and other trappings, for me to not get bored at all despite the lack of development the song receives in its four and a half minutes.

Throw in a marvelously atmospheric love song in "To Turn You On" and two decent instrumentals (which total only about 3:15 but certainly aren't harmful), and you have a whole lot of good songs for a late-period Roxy Music album, especially one in this style. I could easily live without "The Main Thing" and "True to Life," but only two mediocre songs out of ten is quite a good job for any band. It's really a terrific swan-song, even if it has nothing to do with the Roxy that grabbed everybody in the first place, and one that's worth picking up. Just make sure that you wait to play it until you're feeling really mellow and-or old.