The two hundred and sixty-fourth album: #264 Roxy Music - Roxy Music
On a cold and dark day like today, with the snow fading and turning into ice, Roxy Music's loud and upbeat British glam rock feels pretty incongruous. They're nice songs, sure, nothing that necessarily stands out as anything amazing. Some of it is off putting for a while, but there's thought put into the sounds that makes them work. It's not comfort listening, the changes in direction makes sure of that, but there's so much more going on in places that you wonder what's going on. At the core there are some good, standard rock songs - parts of this really could come from an early sixties rock album- but it's been added to, with unconventional intros and intermissions, so the occasional changes in instrument don't stand out as much.
It's probably Brian Eno's signature that's in there, pushing the music beyond its rock roots, and that influence is one I know will stretch beyond this. Focusing on that though ignores the good rock songs in there, the variation that comes in, and everything else in there. Part of why it's hard to place is because it feels this album experiments, still, with new styles in a way that I think I'll see pay off in later albums.