Roxy Music - Country Life (1974)

Roxy Edition Four is a dazzler, with more writing contributions from Mackay and Manzanera, more Eddie Jobson, and a rather saucy cover (meant to be a send-up of dull, rural living magazines).

Like all three preceding albums, Country Life similarly wastes no time, grabbing the listener right from the onset. "The Thrill of It All" opens with pounding keyboards, then guitar and bass entering together to rev-up the engine, rolling out the red carpet for Ferry's vocals, which shoot in like gale winds. The next track "Three and Nine," by contrast, is breezy and light, a song in search of a summer patio and poolside drinks with little umbrellas in them. If "Three and Nine" is a song for appetizer-hour, however, the very fun "If It Takes All Night" is for after-hours, the kind of song someone might crank out on a piano during a party at that time of the evening when everyone is vegging out on the sofas drunk out of their gourds but smiling. "Out of the Blue" is an intense classic. As it opens, you can feel the storm clouds gathering on the horizon: the phasing effects, the trepidation of Mackay's woodwind, and the swinging undercut of strings. By the end of the song, the clouds burst and Jobson's electric violin solo pours down furiously like rain and hail amidst the darkness. The album closes with "Prairie Rose," ostensibly Ferry's tribute to his Texan girlfriend at the time, model Jerry Hall. I feel this is one of the band's all time best songs, and the interaction between the coasting whisk of Manzanera's steel lines and Ferry's "Hey, hey..." during the chorus is immaculate.

Country Life is to some extent an album of contradictions. On the one hand, it is very much a logical progression content to pass along as a continuation of forms and ideas developed on Stranded (e.g., compare the similarities between "All I Want Is You," "A Really Good Time," and "Bittersweet" with "Street Life," "Just Like You," and "A Song for Europe," respectively). The established contrast between the extroverted calls to disinhibition of "Thrill of It All," and "All I Want Is You" — intended to represent a surface or façade — with the distanced introspection and alienation of "A Really Good Time" — intended to represent what lies beneath the skin — is also another hallmark of this band, and one that gave this band such depth and added dimension.

However, it seems like Country Life also presents the band at their most stylistically far-reaching. How many other albums jump from the bluesy "If It Takes All Night," to the oddball Eurodirge of "Bitter Sweet," to the Medieval aura of "Triptych," to the funk of "Casanova"? Not too many. There are many other creative touches to this album as well. I like, for example, how on "Triptych," much like a visual triptych, the vocals are presented in shifting channels from left-center-right as the song progresses. There are also probably other contrasts present here as well. For example, "Triptych" with its Christian imagery exudes a sense of ascetic spirituality and some sense of optimism in its final lines, only to be strikingly followed by the hedonistic themes and cynical worldview of "Casanova."

Ferry's lyrics, as usual, are right on target and prime stuff. As I have in my other reviews, at this point I can't resist piping in with some of my favorite lines: "I'm not so special/You're a misfit, too..." "Now I know there's a future for all of us/Not so long ago I was so scared," "There are many things that I could say/To try and comfort you/But I know the words you like to hear are/ Simply...'I Love You.'"

Like every other early album of the band, you just simply can't go wrong with this one. Another surefire winner, a big fave, and one of the great rock albums. ~ Review by Joe McGlinchey @ Ground and Sky


Tracklisting:
1. The Thrill of It All (6:24)
2. Three and Nine (4:04)
3. All I Want Is You (2:53)
4. Out of the Blue (4:46)
5. If It Takes All Night (3:12)
6. Bitter Sweet (4:50)
7. Triptych (3:09)
8. Casanova (3:27)
9. A Really Good Time (3:45)
10. Prairie Rose (5:12)

Total Time: 41:42

Line-Up:
- Eddie Jobson / synthesizer, strings, violin, keyboards
- Bryan Ferry / keyboards, vocals, voices
- Phil Manzanera / guitar
- John Gustafson / bass
- Andy Mackay / oboe, saxophone
- Paul Thompson / drums