Roxy Music: Siren - 1975
By 1975, the cracks were appearing in the hull of the good ship Roxy Music. Bryan Ferry had already begun his successful solo career.
The time was probably right for a break. 1974's Country Life had certainly not been a bad album, indeed many thought it was their best, but in many ways it was no innovative classic either. It seemed, even then, that this was to be something of a transitional album, in terms of sound, style and approach.
Like The Faces and Rod Stewart, Roxy Music were starting to look a bit more like a vehicle for Bryan Ferry. Like Stewart too, Ferry was allowing more transatlantic influences to enter his music, and they are apparent here, on a Roxy Music album for the first time. Siren trod water, quite well, as it happened, and flirted with the burgeoning disco genre too.
Ferry's imagery here is focused, and there's less synthesized clutter, fewer sound effects, more straight, almost Ferry solo material. In many ways it can sound like a Ferry solo album. It is definitely the least "Roxy" of the five phase one albums. Art rock and avant-garde glam stylings are now long gone and the sound and accompanying image from Ferry are very much in the slick, lush, cultured, suave, sophisti-pop vein. It drops several levels of quirky creativity - sacrificed in favour of quality balladry and moments dabbling in proto-disco. There is nothing fascinating or perplexing to be found on this album, but it is not without its intoxicating moments.
There is certainly weight to the argument that claims that, starting in parts of Country Life and certainly continuing throughout nearly all of Siren (apart from the opening to Sentimental Fool) the actual fabric of Roxy's sound gets steadily more conventional and tame.
Anyway, on to the songs and let's take our place in the singles bar....
The now iconic opener, Love Is The Drug, with its atmospheric "footsteps on gravel and car starting" intro sounded great in 1975 and over forty years later it still does. It never sounds out of date. I love Paul Thompson's drum rolls before each chorus too. This track had the first of those transatlantic influences that Roxy would come to deal in with its New York City or Paris after dark vibe and disco-ish bass line. This song paved the way for Roxy Music phase two, from 1979 to 1983. Its 1975 single release and appearance as the lead-off track on this album saw the first moment that Roxy started to gain new fans, the sort who would go on to consider this album one of their best offerings, a bit like those who love Springsteen for Born In The USA, Dire Straits for Brothers In Arms or Queen for Its A Kind Of Magic.End Of The Line is an appealing Ferry piano-driven ballad with a strong vocal that doesn't justify too much more analysis. It is quite long, at over five minutes, but it never outstays its welcome. The extended intro to Sentimental Fool seems to want to hark back to the old "experimental" days of Brian Eno and 1973's For Your Pleasure before ending up as a drawn out Ferry ballad. 1973 certainly seemed along time ago, now, though.
Whirlwind is typical Stranded-era Roxy, rather like that album's Serenade, full of crashing, swirling guitar and frantic pace, living up to its title.
Quirky, piano-clunky and oddly catchy, but ultimately inconsequential. That is She Sells. There's quite a bit of this sort of thing on this album, isn't there? It even has a bit of a cod-funk sound to it at times as well. These were quite intrinsic changes to the band's sound.
The melodic slowie Could It Happen To Me? is pleasant enough, with a nice switch from slow ballad to a jazzy, more upbeat middle bit in the "oh boy, it's getting rough, when my old-world charm isn't quite enough" part.
Both Ends Burning is five minutes or so of percussive transatlantic disco influenced funky rock and excellent it is too, although many fans from the 1972-73 days hated it. It very much tapped into the US disco thing that was prevalent at the time, with its infectious rhythms and funky percussion. Once again, it showed that Roxy were evolving, musically and stylistically, as were artists as diverse as David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and T. Rex at the same time. Eno must have hated it though, but that said it wouldn't be long before he too started dabbling in world music and dance rhythms.Nightingale is a perhaps welcome return to riffy Whirlwind and Serenade territory - fast paced Roxy rock, but maybe not quite as breathless as the previous two mentioned. Just Another High is an extended, rather sad farewell to Roxy Music Part One. Roxy always came up with great album closers, didn't they ? The great innovators had become classy balladeers. Good ones, mind.
Finally, I have always found Siren to have a bit of an odd sound to it - almost mono in its big, booming central tone. Listen to Love Is The Drug as an example - the bass coming right out of centre stage and even the drum taradiddles are not in obvious stereo. Basically, there is no sign of a classic seventies separated stereo sound to be found on the album. Odd, given that it was 1975.
Overall, while this is undoubtedly a good album, it is most definitely fifth in the list of quality thus far, you can tell by the amount I have written about it in comparison to the others.
Then we got For Your Pleasure (Live). Both Ends Burning was backed by a live recording of For Your Pleasure. It is less than five minutes long, so I imagine it has been edited. Phil Manzanera's guitar part is excellent as is Paul Thompson's drumming, particularly at the end. It is a powerful rendition of what is a slightly less dramatic track in its studio incarnation.
