20th...Roxy's second

(Bonus points to anyone who's already noticed that this is my third "For" somebody or other)

For Your Pleasure. Five stars.

So, 1973 gave us the last Roxy Music album before Eno split, and it takes the darkness hinted at on the prior's Ladytron and lets it loose. From album cover in, this is the excessive, even decadent expansion of everything originally presented.

To start, the camp is campier. Do the Strand is essentially a joke song, and wears off as all such numbers will if overplayed. But man, the bridge is killer and the band cooks... Even on silly throwaways the band puts in a five star performance.

Beauty Queen is a poetic, strangely touching end-of-love song. Romance in Ferry's world always seems expensive, glamorous and entirely superficial, yet he really wrings the pathos out of it. This is probably the best song on here, as the band gets to rock out, and Ferry's ballad shines through with fabulous turns of phrase. And his voice is unmatchable.

Strictly Confidential is a macabrely rendered deathbed lament (every songwriter has got one of those inside them). It creeps slowly upward, becoming more and more otherworldly. All details are left to the imagination.

Editions of You is an all out, chaotic slice of art-rock with more extreme camp and a great trade-off among lead instruments.

Then there's In Every Dream Home a Heartache, more like spoken word than song. It's a peek into an empty space, a world where the excessively rich have every convenience but no soul. So (the narrator at least) turns to the gothic and perverse right in the middle of suburbia. When the music does kick in it's worth the wait, even though it contains a false stop (and I really hate those).

The Bogus Man is further creepiness, but the least effecting work overall. Oh, it's loungy and strangely upbeat; the brief lyric is about an emotionally stunted man and simmers with undercurrents of stalking and violence. That lasts about four minutes and then we're fed minute after minute (five in all) of instrumental noodling. It doesn't build or go anywhere terribly interesting, it just proceeds aimlessly along. Why?

Grey Lagoons is underrated. A bit celebratory, but it, like Beauty Queen, brims with energy and isn't camp. It's not as good as the earlier track, just because the lyrics are a bit lightweight.

And Eno, I hear you ask? Oh, he's running riot on the title track, a rather sweet last minute note. It does it's fair share of noodling too, but coming at the end and mimicking a sunrise, it goes somewhere and fades out where you can't follow it.

Roxy Music would never sound like this again. Take heart though; their second phase was equal to the first, though only lasting another two albums. Then they caught the most unfortunate of rock's maladies...they sold out. But all those stories will come later. This week, my concern is For Your Pleasure, one of the best CDs they ever made.