Roxy Music - Country Life

Released - November 1974

Genre - Art Rock

Producer - Chris Thomas; John Punter & Roxy Music

Selected Personnel - Bryan Ferry (Vocals/Keyboards/Harmonica); John Gustafson (Bass); Eddie Jobson (Violin/Keyboards); Andy Mackay (Oboe/Saxophone); Phil Manzanera (Guitar); Paul Thompson (Drums)

Standout Track - The Thrill Of It All

My most lasting memory of my first encounter with Roxy Music's wonderful Country Life was that, within its first twenty-five seconds the band totally obliterated all memory of their previous album, 1973's Stranded. After its compellingly urgent keyboard riff that kicks things off, album opener "The Thrill Of It All" quickly explodes into one of the most exciting and downright brilliant songs of Roxy Music's ouvre, replete with Bryan Ferry's sonorous wails, Phil Manzanera's incendiary guitar work and frenetic electric violin solos from Eddie Jobson. It still ranks as one of the band's crowning achievements, and was single-handedly responsible for restoring my faith in them after the disappointment in Stranded. These days, Stranded has come to creep up a little in my estimations, but I still find whole swathes of it too ponderous and aimless for me to really enjoy it. For me, it shows a band struggling to find a sense of direction in the wake of the departure of Brian Eno, who had lent so much colour and avant-garde weirdness to their first two records. In the wake of his departure, Ferry had to try and balance out his own desire to just write catchy pop songs with the need to prove that they could still deliver as a kitsch art rock outfit. It doesn't quite deliver on either count, but by the time the band had had some time to develop some truly great material, Country Life is ample proof that even without Eno they were able to create the same brilliant, colourful art rock that made Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure such instant classics.

Part of the newfound confidence might be that, after the autocratic control Ferry had exercised over Roxy Music in its early years that ultimately led to Eno's departure, they had started to function a little more as a democratic unit. Starting on Stranded, guitarist Manzanera and saxophonist/oboeist Andy Mackay had started sharing writing duties with Ferry on some songs. While the Manzanera and Mackay co-writes on Country Life aren't necessarily all the standout tracks (the brilliant standout "The Thrill Of It All" is a solo Ferry composition), there's still a sense that this is a band more comfortable in playing together than on the more stultifying and lacklustre mood of Stranded. The songwriting is also generally of high enough quality to make you forget the absence of Eno's distortion and synthesiser effects which lent so much flavour to the earlier stuff. In his place is Jobson, who has a much less esoteric and inventive approach to sound to adequately replicate Eno's contributions but instead lends colour and weirdness courtesy of his electric violin work, which slashes across in searing lines on tracks like "The Thrill Of It All" and "Out Of The Blue."

There's also Ferry's natural sense of louche charisma and charming weirdness that keeps things from ever feeling too conventional - the warbling backing vocals of "All I Want Is You" and the brash menace of "Casanova" are palpably weird. Sonic effects are also used effectively on the clanging, bell-like cacophony of Manzanera's guitar riff that opens "All I Want Is You," and in the disorienting, space-like flanging effects on "Out Of The Blue." The one thing that lets Country Life down isn't in any specific track - there are precious few low-points here, save for the slightly perfunctory-seeming "A Really Good Time," which seems like a bit of dead air between the swaggering "Casanova" and the cartoonish, upbeat "Prairie Rose" - but in the general sense that it rarely elevates the idea of what Roxy Music can achieve. Only on "The Thrill Of It All" is there are any really tangible sense that the band is upping their game and building on what's come before, while the rest is a collection of songs that ably demonstrate that they were still a force to be reckoned with and that Stranded didn't represent a downward slide.

But, while Roxy Music might no longer feel like they're truly pushing the envelope of what rock music can achieve, they rarely put together a finer collection of songs on which to really enjoy themselves. In addition the highlights I've already mentioned, there's the lighthearted American boogie of "If It Takes All Night" which, with its colourful harmonica solo from Ferry, shows the band feeling more American in its style and influences then ever before or after ("Prairie Rose," a tribute to the Texan home of Ferry's then-girlfriend Jerry Hall, later to marry Mick Jagger, further demonstrates the band's interest in Americana at the time). From the light and colour of "If It Takes All Night" we descend into the murkier, stranger menace of "Bitter-Suite," which incorporates Germanic oom-pah brass and sways wildly from quietly mesmeric to brashly terrifying. The album's final great standout tracks are the aforementioned "Casanova," a brilliantly confident slice of brash rock distinguished by Mackay's acrobatic oboe work, and "Prairie Rose," another of the band's most feelgood tracks which provides ample room for some impassioned warbling from Ferry, and for the American flavour of Manzanera's slide guitar.

As mentioned, few of these songs are ever quite as exciting or new as they felt on Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure, but there's also no point on the record where it really feels like we're listening to formerly great band going through the motions. Ultimately it's somewhere between the two - a band recapturing what made them great and really having fun with it, delivering a hugely entertaining album in the process. Sadly, it would be the last great album they made for a long time. 1975's Siren provided them with their only US hit, the brilliant "Love Is The Drug" but, other than that and a compellingly menacing song called "Sentimental Fool," it has little great material to recommend it. From there, the band effectively split for a few years while each of them focused on solo projects before returning in 1978 as a much more slick, pop act, anticipating the sophisticated pop sound of the New Romantic movement. Their "comeback" album Manifesto is largely forgettable, meaning their next moment of greatness after Country Life was 1980's Flesh + Blood. The band showcased by that album, furthermore, feels totally different in spirit and tone than the avant-garde weirdos of the early years, meaning Country Life is a swansong of sorts - an almost-final hoorah for one of the greatest pioneers of art rock in the early 70s.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Bryan Ferry except where noted.

1. The Thrill Of It All

2. Three And Nine (Bryan Ferry & Andy Mackay)

3. All I Want Is You

4. Out Of The Blue (Bryan Ferry & Phil Manzanera)

5. If It Takes All Night

6. Bitter-Suite (Bryan Ferry & Andy Mackay)

7. Triptych

8. Casanova

9. A Really Good Time

10. Prairie Rose (Bryan Ferry & Phil Manzanera)