ROXY MUSIC

I first started collecting Roxy Music records because I enjoyed Phil Manzanera's work with Quiet Sun, 801 and his solo albums. While I can usually find something to like on their albums, they never got very high on my listening list. The main reason was Bryan Ferry. On the later albums he became a tolerable crooner, but here at the beginning, he was just plain bad. He overused an obnoxious tremolo in his voice, I presume, to cover up the fact that he couldn't hit a proper note. Thank heavens he didn't make it into King Crimson.

The music isn't totally bad. Eno added some cool synthesizers, Manzanera was a hot guitarist, even at this early stage and Andy MacKay played a mean saxophone. But that voice. AAaaaarrrrggghhh! Listen to later live versions of some of these songs to hear how much better they could be when sung properly.

Sorry. 2.5 stars, rouded down.