Roxy Music

1	Re-Make/Re-Model 5:14
2	Ladytron 4:26
3	If There Is Something 6:34
4	Virginia Plain Bonus Track 2:58
5	2HB 4:30
6	The Bob (Medley) 5:48
7	Chance Meeting 3:08
8	Would You Believe? 3:53
9	Sea Breezes 7:03
10	Bitters End 2:03

Barnes & Noble

Glittery but not 100 percent glam, artful but not really art rock, Roxy Music possessed a voracious appetite for cultural influences that landed them on the periphery of many different -- and sometimes conflicting -- movements but never detracted from their unique and passionate music. With this 1972 debut recording, they brought a sense of style to music two decades before Versace began outfitting rock stars. The '50s haircuts and animal print jackets worn in their inner sleeve photos notwithstanding, Roxy Music were far from poseurs, and their songs introduced the British dandy tradition to rock. Lead singer and principal songwriter Brian Ferry sang odes to love that were fraught with heavy, almost self-mocking irony, and his full-tilt rockers featured clashes between Andy McKay's '50s-styled saxophone licks and Brian Eno's futuristic synthesizer fills. One of the best songs, "The Bob," is a montage (years before deejays made tuneful deconstruction into pop fodder) of England during the war. At a moment when most rockers only looked forward, Roxy Music drew on a wealth of musical antecedents to create a futuristic sound. Many classics or near-classics would follow during the band's on-again, off-again decade together. Martin Johnson

All Music Guide

Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music's eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock's boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures. Although no musician demonstrates much technical skill at this point, they are driven by boundless imagination -- Brian Eno's synthesized "treatments" exploit electronic instruments as electronics, instead of trying to shoehorn them into conventional acoustic patterns. Similarly, Bryan Ferry finds that his vampiric croon is at its most effective when it twists conventional melodies, Phil Manzanera's guitar is terse and unpredictable, while Andy Mackay's saxophone subverts rock & roll cliches by alternating R&B honking with atonal flourishes. But what makes Roxy Music such a confident, astonishing debut is how these primitive avant-garde tendencies are married to full-fledged songs, whether it's the free-form, structure-bending "Remake/Remodel" or the sleek glam of "Virginia Plain," the debut single added to later editions of the album. That was the trick that elevated Roxy Music from an art school project to the most adventurous rock band of the early '70s. Stephen Thomas Erlewine