Five albums from the catalog of Roxy Music are set to be released on limited-edition Japanese SHM-CD (Super High Material CD). The albums include Roxy Music (1972), For Your Pleasure (1973), Stranded (1973), Country Life (1974), and Siren (1975). The reissues will be packaged in paper-sleeves featuring replicas of the original LP artwork with a Japanese obi-strap.
In the early 1970s, Bryan Ferry (vocals, keyboards) took his idiosyncratic musical interests and found bandmates in Brian Eno (vocals, synths, tape effects), Phil Manzanera (guitar), Andy Mackay (vocals, oboe, saxophone), Graham Simpson (bass) and Paul Thompson (drums).
Heavily stylized and highly catchy, Roxy Music’s self-titled debut is considered a postmodern masterpiece and featured their breakthrough hit “Virginia Plain.”
Roxy Music followed up their debut with For Your Pleasure. As a result of spending more time in the studio, the album’s production values were more elaborate and experimental. Single “Do the Strand” has been called the signature Roxy Music anthem.
Roxy Music’s third album, Stranded, was their first without Eno, who was replaced by multi-instrumentalist Eddie Jobson. It was also the first album on which Ferry was not the sole songwriter with Mackay and Manzanera making songwriting contributions. Stranded topped the U.K. charts and landed a Top 10 hit with the vibrant “Street Life.”
While a strong visual aesthetic was crucial to every Roxy Music release, 1974’s Country Life was immediately infamous for its cover art, which features two German models in lingerie. The album found the group distancing itself from the fading glam-rock movement and edging closer to rock’s mainstream. Country Life includes Roxy Music’s fourth hit single, “All I Want Is You.”
The last of the five studio albums constituting Roxy Music’s remarkable first phase, Siren was produced by Chris Thomas (The Beatles, John Cale, Badfinger). In addition to left-field tracks like “Both Ends Burning” and “Sentimental Fool” Siren contained Roxy Music’s highest-charting U.S. single, “Love Is the Drug.” Recalling that “it sounded like a hit” Andy Mackay later told The Quietus how the song came together. “Like most hit singles, ‘Love Is the Drug’ kind of selected itself and always sounded like something special.”
Buy Roxy Music’s albums on SHM-CD format now.
