Roxy Music

While Roxy Music were often derided as sophisticated and slick to the point of plasticity, this is the only record that lives up to their negative stereotypes. Nonetheless, this is plastic soul of the highest order. The swooning "My Only Love" became the sound of future Bryan Ferry releases, while "Same Old Scene" served as the blueprint for Duran Duran and so many others.

Flesh + Blood is such a shockingly bad Roxy Music record that it provokes a certain
fascination. The line on early Roxy (when Eno was a member) was that the band radiated
high-tech decadence, and Flesh + Blood connects with this historical interpretation by
confirming the decadent part: e.g., what could be more outré right now than an art-rock
disco album? These days, the group has pared itself down to a hard core: Bryan... More >

Except maybe on "My Only Love"--imagine a song of that title written for (no, rejected by) Perry Como--this never sinks to their Liebschmerz-drenched nadir. But the secondhand funk is getting too easy to take. Much as I enjoy the languorous "Midnight Hour" and above-it-all "Eight Miles High," I always get suspicious when covers overwhelm originals. (Grade - B)