Siren [Remaster]

Performer: Roxy Music
Engineer: Steve Nye
Producer: Chris Thomas
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: Roxy Music: Bryan Ferry (vocals, keyboards); Phil Manzanera (guitar); Edwin Johnson (strings, keyboards, synthesizer); Andrew Mackay (oboe, saxophone); John Gustafson (bass); Paul Thompson (drums). Recorded at Air Studios, London, England in 1975. All tracks have been digitally remastered using HDCD technology. Roxy Music's fifth album, SIREN, is a return to the form of their first couple of records--that is, it mixes astonishing material with some that, well, isn't quite as good. This is not to say that the band abandoned sophistication, however. If anything, they turned the suaveness up a notch--tracks like "Sentimental Fool" and the brilliant "Just Another High" both, albeit in different ways, suggest the path the band would follow before arriving at their masterpiece, AVALON. For those keeping track of these things, the cover model on this album is Jerry Hall. "Love Is The Drug," the album's first track, is a classic. A story-song that could describe the beginning of the relationship that dissolves in "Dance Away" (from MANIFESTO, the band's next studio album), it is built on solid rhythm grooves with added flourishes of bright guitar. Bryan Ferry's vocals are more expressive than usual on "Both Ends Burning," a fairly sedate, but insistent dance groove with synthesizers weaving in and out of the propulsive bass line. SIREN, as the middle album in the band's studio career, includes pointers to both their past and future and is an excellent introduction to the worlds of Roxy Music.

Q (9/99, pp.122-3) - 4 stars (out of 5) - "...their glossiest set...as gorgeously epic as 'Sentimental Fool' and as percussively hedonistic as 'Both Ends Burning'..." Vibe (12/99, p.164) - Included in Vibe's 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century Mojo (Publisher) (9/99, p.120) - "...a slick but largely convincing set of performances that owed little to the original Roxy spirit but suited Ferry's lounge lizard persona to a tee."

Like Bowie, Roxy Music delivered art-rock with a heavy dose of irony, a scarce commodity in the mid-'70s. Bryan Ferry's lounge-lizard persona meshed with Brian Eno's pioneering electronics and Phil Manzanera's highly textured guitar work to create a decadent but humorous sound that influenced many '80s new wave bands on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Cars to Duran Duran.

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