Roxy Music Roxy Live ( 180g vinyl 3LP )

Release date: 19-02-2019 (originally released in 2003)

 

2019 German reissue on 100% virgin vinyl 3LP -with "Jealous Guy". While a new Roxy Music studio album remains a tantalising pipe dream for persons of a certain age, Live--featuring 22 sonically-consummate tracks recorded in 16 plushly-upholstered auditoriums, from Stuttgart to Adelaide via Vancouver--proves to be just the ticket for the luckless majority who missed the band's much-feted 2001 reunion world tour.

 

When the news filtered out from the Strand in London that Roxy (Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera and Paul Thompson but, alas, no Brian Eno) were reconvening, headshaking sceptics anticipated a perfunctory nostalgia trip by superannuated globetrotters looking to increase their off-shore equity holdings. How wrong they were.

 

A1 Re-Make / Re-Model

A2 Street Life

A3 Ladytron

A4 While My Heart Is Still Beating

 

B1 Out Of The Blue

B2 A Song For Europe

B3 My Only Love

 

C1 In Every Dream Home A Heartache

C2 Oh Yeah!

C3 Both Ends Burning

C4 Tara

 

D1 More Than This

D2 If There Is Something

D3 Mother Of Pearl

D4 Avalon

 

E1 Dance Away

E2 Jealous Guy

E3 Editions Of You

E4 Virginia Plain

 

F1 Love Is The Drug

F2 Do The Strand

F3 For Your Pleasure

 While Live is consummately professional and exhibits an enviable attention to detail (Lucy Wilkins supplants Eddie Jobson's violin virtuosity on "Out of the Blue" and there are even revving motorbike noises on "Virginia Plain") it is far from clinically sterile. The grand old godfathers of glam still manage to stoke up a fire behind the likes of "Remake Remodel" and Brian Ferry continues to sing with all the sensory shudder of a man either handling a poisonous spider or having his back scratched by some delectable supermodel. Their influence is still palpable--Suede, for example, must have rewritten "Street Life" three times over. Pretty much everything on Live--from the art-rock chic of the early years to the urbane charisma of "Avalon"--sounds as topically fresh as today's edition of the six o'clock news. --Kevin Maidment