Roxy Music

Ferry's combination of intellectual irony and lush romanticism resulted in some of the best Roxy Music songs ever: "Street Life;" the completely over-the-top "A Song for Europe;" and the (still) staggeringly brilliant "Mother of Pearl."

Two British bands are genuinely stretching the dimensions of pop music. One, 10 c.c., has
already found a degree of popularity in the States. Roxy Music has been unable to cross
the Atlantic so far, but that should change with this album. Stranded is one of the most
exciting and entertaining British LPs of the Seventies. Roxy has constructed the modern
English equivalent of the wall-of-sound. One instrument, either the guitar or a ke... More >

Any artist as oblique and ambitious as Bryan Ferry deserves an oblique, ambitious review, here provided (unintentionally) by Sidney Tillem in his "Figurative Art 1969: Aspects and Prospects": "By moral in the context of art I mean a style which executes the deeper social and psychological function of form, as opposed to a particular aspect of vanity called taste. Pop sensibility, pop consciousness, pop sentimentality have been invaluable in clarifying the provincialism and nostalgia that actually permeate a culture that has come to pride itself on sophistication. But they have not resulted in a new art simply because the requisite idealism has been lacking." (Grade - B+)