Roxy Music

For Your Pleasure (1973)

Eno's synthesizers and tape treatments tear through the band's glossy rock, and Ferry sings over it like a lounge singer at the end of a bad night. "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" is a slow song about love for an inflatable doll that ends in a noisy storm, and "The Bogus Man" is a long rhythm built almost from bass and drums alone. It was the last album Eno made with them, and it is still the best case for art-school glam.

Sleeve notes

For Your Pleasure · 1973

Roxy Music formed in London in 1970 around singer and songwriter Bryan Ferry, a former art student, and arrived in 1972 sounding like nothing else on the radio. They had a sax and oboe, Brian Eno's synthesizer treatments, Phil Manzanera's guitar, and a look of 1950s rock and roll crossed with science fiction. Ferry sang in a crooner's quiver with lyrics full of art and ironic romance, and the sleeves and clothes were treated as part of the music.

Eno left after two albums, and the band slid towards a smoother, more sophisticated sound that peaked on Avalon in 1982. Manzanera has said the band loved the Velvet Underground for their few chords and unusual lyrics. Roxy Music in turn showed a generation of bands, from the Human League and Cabaret Voltaire to Destroyer, how to be glamorous, arty and a pop group at once.