For whatever reason, Roxy Music has failed to acquire the enormous cachet of fellow 70s and early-80s new wave pioneers like Talking Heads or—why not?—David Bowie. The common thread here, of course, would be Brian Eno, who produced the Heads’ seminal Remain in Light and collaborated with Bowie on his famed Berlin Trilogy albums. But Eno’s connection to Roxy Music was even stronger; in fact, he was a founding member, present on the band’s first two albums. Following his departure, Bryan Ferry and company pressed on and arguably got better, seemingly having little trouble filling the void that Eno must have left.
Even still, when you think about “art rock,” you probably think of David Byrne long before you might think of Bryan Ferry. But the parallels between the two frontmen are clear: melodious songwriting, smooth yet decidedly imperfect vocals (though Ferry’s vibrato remains unmatched), and a cautious bearing that never attempts to dominate the music. Roxy Music formed three years before Talking Heads, so why do they get the historical short shrift?
It’s inexplicable. Besides Bowie, I can’t think of another artist or band who released such a strong string of albums in the 1970s. That the members of Roxy Music were able to maintain their hot streak following Eno’s departure is a testament to their coherence as a band and their keen sense of balance between high and low culture; for instance, compare the elegant saxophone and harmonica explorations on 1974’s Country Life’s “Three and Nine” to the Shaft-inflected funk of that same album’s “A Really Good Time.” The band’s artiest moments never stray far from pop traditions, while their most straightforward offerings never seem too easy or cheap.
Nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than on 1975’s bewitching Siren, which finds the band at the peak of its sonic powers. Patient glam rock flirts with Hunky Dory-style pianos, slow-burning psychedelia, and the then-nascent trappings of disco in equal measure, resulting in 42 minutes of varied, impeccable pop music that sounds fresh and exciting almost forty years after its initial release.
I say that the album is “patient” because it doesn’t bludgeon the listener with its hooks (indeed, half the songs here cross the five-minute mark), but Siren begins with its most immediate and accessible track. “Love is the Drug” slithers like the seductress on the album’s cover (model Jerry Hall, by the way, who dated Ferry at the time, but would soon leave him for Mick Jagger). Dig those surf-rock guitars and hollow brass blasts, back-alley adornments to a dance floor-ready drums and discofied bass line. The steady rhythm serves to buttress Ferry’s manic, staccato delivery of a seedy boy-meets-girl tale in which he “troll[s] downtown in the red light place” before meeting his girl at a singles bar. This is no lovey-dovey romance; Ferry’s lust-as-love urges manifest themselves as an unconquerable addiction when he says that “love is the drug and I need to score.” “Love is the Drug” may be relatively downtempo dance music, but it’s undeniably dance music all the same; a fact made more evident by Grace Jones’s hyper 1980 cover.
Homespun strings and tender piano open the next track, “End of the Line,” before segueing into a slow jam that straddles the line between Ziggy Stardust glam and folksy acoustic charm. The shift in tone might seem jarring at first, but the absolutely sublime hook quickly lays any doubts to rest—the soulfulness in the backing vocal harmonies and the bluesy, defeated lyrics are the perfect comedown after the hedonistic “Love is the Drug.” “End of the Line” flows right into “Sentimental Fool,” in which feedback-heavy guitar noodling and airy synth textures linger in tune-up mode until they’re guided by a determined bass line toward a ballad song that features Ferry’s feeble, almost heartbreaking falsetto. But the chord changes here are just as indelible as they were on the previous two tracks; Siren is a pop album even at its most experimental moments. To wit: the song’s outro is sparked by tumbling keyboard scales and the kind of crunchy, retro-chic electric guitars that (to use a modern reference) Kanye West employs on “Gorgeous.” There’s a funky undercurrent beneath these songs that wasn’t as pronounced on earlier Roxy recordings, and it’s at once smooth and unsettling.
“Whirlwind” opens with monstrous guitar riffs that don’t let up over the course of the song’s relatively brief 3-and-a-half minutes. “Beware—whirrrrlwiiind!” Ferry shouts as the track fades out, seemingly too dangerous and unhinged to go on any longer. “She Sells,” on the other hand, begins on a jaunty and calm note, letting piano do the instrumental legwork as Ferry rips into a superficial lover he can’t resist: she’s “rather nouveau than never,” proffering a “county and modern” attitude that evokes everything from “Oriental confusion” to “auto-erotic” fantasy. A chugging coda provides the rationale for Ferry’s infatuation: this unnamed woman (or perhaps a siren) offers him a release from his “nine to five daily grind.” “She sells, I need,” Ferry concludes, continuing the analogy between lust and drug use that he first laid out on “Love is the Drug.”
The lovelorn “Could It Happen To Me” concludes Siren’s structured middle section, which finds Ferry once again pining for a girl who at the very least seems far too worldly for him; he self-deprecatingly refers to himself as “an average man” with “old-world charm [that] isn‘t quite enough” who grapples with that classic Charlie Brown predicament: “While you’re out of reach, I never change.” The melody of this song shifts from hopeful to jaded and back again; handclaps seem to taunt a doubtful Ferry with their breeziness. Cynical handclaps! Who’d’a thunk?
And then we reach “Both Ends Burning,” the true standout track on an album chock full of them. Here we get soaring synth lines and galloping bongos, wailing saxophones and funky guitars. “Tell me, will I ever learn? It’s too late, the rush is on,” sings Ferry as the music seems to respond with an adrenaline rush of piano stabs. The song is simply epic, and when Ferry finally realizes that he’ll “keep on burning ‘til the end,” it’s as joyous and scary as you might imagine. Tracks like this highlight Ferry’s ability to invest both understated lyrical barbs and cathartic yells with equal emotional intensity; “Both Ends Burning” has a short fuse, ready to explode at any second. You expect the last two tracks to offer a release, an explosion of sound and energy to match that of “Burning.” Bring it on.
Instead, “Nightingale” opens with psychedelic acoustic guitars. Is this the same album? What happened to the sweet release? Suddenly, it hits you—a real rock n’ roll revival moment. The bass, as elsewhere on the album, admirably holds the song’s elements together, an especially necessary function when the music ebbs and flows like it does here. Stormy one minute, calm the next—are those orchestral strings in the background? “I couldn’t bear to be alone,” Ferry sings in the album’s umpteenth moment of brutal lyrical sincerity. The strings pick up, swirling their way into a Motown-inspired crescendo that finds Ferry basking in the heat of the moment. “Soon when the morning comes, we will both be gone,” he admits. “Lead, I’ll follow on.” A bird chirps in the distance; the night is over.
The last song is titled “Just Another High.” Is Ferry still flying with his love? “Maybe your heart is aching. I wouldn’t know, now would I?” he sings. I guess that’s a no.
“Just Another High” sums up the romantic cynicism of the prior eight songs before the final, inevitable revelation: “Maybe I’m too stuck on you; maybe I got stuck on you.” Such is the nature of unrequited love; however much you might hate it, you feel you need it, too. It’s insatiable, draining, aching, and frustrating; when you’re crushing on someone who doesn’t feel the same way, you experience the dizzying highs and catastrophic lows of love by yourself, which is what makes it so painful. How do you cope? You pour yourself a stiff drink, invite some friends over, and plan to get crazy. Don’t forget to dust off the Siren sleeve jacket—this record is definitely going to be on heavy rotation tonight. That’s what it’s there for; you can’t resist.
