FOR YOUR PLEASURE

Roxy Music returned less than a year after their debut album with "For your pleasure". The cover picture of a seductive lady told us that the band continued to hold their artistic side to be as important as the music. From a musical perspective, things turned slightly more mainstream after the eclectic diversity of "Roxy Music", with Ferry's vocals increasingly becoming the dominant focal point.

We open with "Do the strand", a song with hit single written all over it. Bizarrely though, it was not released as such in the UK, preference being given to the non-album song "Pyjamarama". It has though become one of the band's best known and best love songs. "Editions of you" is similar in sound and potential, the strong beat and blistering sax solo pointing again towards the pop market.

"Beauty queen" and "Strictly confidential" are more in keeping with the style of the first album, but even here there is little room for instrumental development, Ferry keeping the ship tight.

"In every home a heartache" is the least penetrable of the tracks on side one, Ferry simply delivering each lyric in the same monotone with only sparse backing. The lyrics are depressive, describing urban loneliness with such lines as

" Inflatable doll, Lover ungrateful, I blew up your body, But you blew my mind"

The song benefits from some dynamic guitar work by Phil Manzanera towards the end and the track has a double ending, popular at the time, the second phase being just that, phased!

Side two is made up of just three songs, the longest of which at over 9 minutes, opens the side. "The bogus man" has an incessant rock-ability type beat. It is though the most adventurous of the tracks on the album, with some excellent mellotron backing improvised sax and decidedly non Ferry like vocals. The lyrics are disturbing both in content and delivery, conveying a you can run but you can't get away menace. The track drifts dangerously close to Krautrock as the insatiable rhythm pumps on and on. Great stuff though.

"Grey lagoons" reverts to a more orthodox rock style with straightforward lead guitar and aggressive sax. It is a decent piece of pop rock, but little more. The title track, which closes the set, is another sparse, rather dark song, which sees Brian Eno applying his colours to a Roxy music song, prior to impending departure.

"For your pleasure" is an album of great contrasts. On the one hand, we have three of the most upbeat and rock orientated songs the band have recorded. On the other we have some overtly depressive and disturbing dirges. From a prog perspective, the album sits on the periphery of the genre perhaps best defined as a sort of pop prog.

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