More Roxy Music

• Roxy’s Art Rock classic from 1975, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from top to bottom
• These are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “huge and rich and open”…”tight bass”…”big, open chorus”…”tubey and 3D”…”great size and energy”…”lots of weight”…”jumping out of the speakers”
• If you know the quality of Atlantic/Atco vinyl in the mid-70s, you know this is about as quiet as we can ever hope to find to them
• The sound here is richer, with much less transistory grain, and more of the all important Tubey Magic than practically all other copies we played
• Some of Bryan Ferry‘s strongest and most consistent songwriting – “Love Is The Drug,” “End of the Line,” “Sentimental Fool” and more
• 5 stars: “Abandoning the intoxicating blend of art rock and glam-pop that distinguished Stranded and Country Life, Roxy Music concentrates on Bryan Ferry’s suave, charming crooner persona for the elegantly modern Siren.”

Siren is one of our favorite Roxy albums, right up there with the first album and well ahead of the commercially appealing Avalon. After reading a rave review in Rolling Stone of the album back in 1975 I took the plunge, bought a copy at my local Tower Records and instantly fell in love with it.

As is my wont, I then proceeded to work my way through their earlier catalog, which was quite an adventure. It takes scores of plays to understand where the band is coming from on the early albums and what it is they’re trying to do.

Now I listen to each of the first five releases on a regular basis. Even after more than forty years, the band’s music never seems to get old.

That seems to be true of a lot of the records from the era that we offer on our site. Otherwise, how on earth could we possibly charge so much money for them?

What The Best Sides Of Siren Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1975
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

The Best Copies Rock

The best copies are fairly transparent and mostly grain-free, with full-bodied vocals and lively sound. There are lots of “spacey” effects on side one, and “spacey” effects rather unsurprisingly need lots of space within which to operate, so the more open the pressing, and the more ambience-resolving it is, the better, as long as it’s tonally correct: neither bright nor thin.

Of all the Roxy albums (with the exception of Avalon) this is probably the best way “in” to the band’s music. The earlier albums are more raucous, the later ones are more rhythmically driven — Siren catches them at their peak, with, as other reviewers have noted, all good songs and no bad ones.

What We’re Listening For on Siren

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.
• Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering — which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, way behind the speakers. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt — Steve Nye in the case — would have put them.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Imports? Not So Fast

The British and German copies of Siren are clearly made from dubbed tapes and sound smeary, small and lifeless.

To be fair, Siren has never impressed us as an exceptionally good-sounding recording. Like other middle period Roxy, records such as Country Life and Manifesto (the albums just before and after), it simply does not have Demo Disc analog sound the way For Your Pleasure, Stranded or the eponymous first album do (the latter two being the best sounding in their catalog).

One would be tempted to assume that the import pressings of Siren would be better sounding, the way the imports of the first four Roxy albums are clearly better sounding. There has never been a domestic Hot Stamper pressing of any of those titles and, since we never buy them or play them, there probably never will be.

But in the case of Siren, it’s the imports that are made from dubs. It may be a British band, recorded in British studios with a British producer, but the British pressed LPs are clearly made from sub-generation tapes, whereas the domestic copies sound like they’re made from the real masters.

Go Figure. And another thing: when it comes to records, never assume.

The typical domestic pressing is flat, bass-shy and opaque, sounding more like compressed cardboard than analog vinyl. Unsurprisingly, the CD, whether imported or produced domestically, is clean and clear and tonally correct but lacks the warmth and richness of the better vinyl pressings.

A Must Own Rock Record

This Demo Disc Quality recording should be part of any serious Rock Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

It also ranks fairly high on our difficulty of reproduction scale. Do not attempt to play it using any but the best equipment.

Side One

Love Is the Drug
End of the Line
Sentimental
Whirlwind

Side Two

She Sells
Could It Happen to Me?
Both Ends Burning
Nightingale
Just Another High

AMG 5 Star Rave Review

Abandoning the intoxicating blend of art rock and glam-pop that distinguished Stranded and Country Life, Roxy Music concentrates on Bryan Ferry’s suave, charming crooner persona for the elegantly modern Siren. As the disco-fied opener “Love Is the Drug” makes clear, Roxy embraces dance and unabashed pop on Siren, weaving them into their sleek, arty sound.

It does come at the expense of their artier inclinations, which is part of what distinguished Roxy, but the end result is captivating. Lacking the consistently amazing songs of its predecessor, Siren has a thematic consistency that works in its favor, and helps elevate its best songs — “Sentimental Fool,” “Both Ends Burning,” “Just Another High” — as well as the album itself into the realm of classics.

Melody Maker

It’s a superb album, striking the listener immediately with a force and invention reserved only for the most special musical experiences. The overall sound, while never lacking the essential characteristics one associates with Roxy, is less dense and ornate than much of its predecessor. There’s a crispness and vitality in Chris Thomas’ production which is reminiscent of the sense of adventure and cavalier spirit which marked their early recordings, an impetuosity which has lately been absent from their work.

Rolling Stone

Successive Rolling Stone Record Guides have given it five-star reviews.

The 1983 edition states: “Siren’s title is appropriate; it has that sort of effect on the listener. It is Roxy’s masterpiece, calling the listener back by virtue of its finely honed instrumental attack and compelling lyrical attitude. “Love is the Drug,” Roxy’s nearest approximation to an American hit single, set the scene of transitory love in a plastic world, while “She Sells” and “Sentimental Fool” pictured the participants in the charade as simultaneously pathetic and heroic”.

The 1992 edition says “On Siren Roxy perfects its suave attack”. In the fourth edition “Siren is smoother; it’s the first Roxy Music album without any failed moments.”

Wikipedia

AMG Background

By the early ’70s, Thomas was among the busiest producers in the industry… [working with Procol Harum], he also mixed classics including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Brian Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets.

However, his greatest early success came as a result of his long stint with Roxy Music, producing the group’s groundbreaking LPs For Your Pleasure, Stranded, and Siren.

From Roxy’s signature glam rock sound, Thomas was next thrust headlong into punk, helming the Sex Pistols’ 1977 landmark debut Never Mind the Bollocks; he also began a long relationship with the Pretenders that yielded not only their renowned self-titled 1980 debut effort, but also the group’s 1984 comeback, Learning to Crawl.

Thomas’ other primary focus of the period [of the ’80s] was INXS — after helming the group’s 1985 breakthrough album, Listen Like Thieves, he moved on to their 1987 smash Kick.

Jason Ankeny

Roxy and Me

I’ve been a giant Roxy Music fan since 1975. Rolling Stone gave Siren a rave review that year, and I went right out and bought myself a copy on their say-so. I then proceeded to play it every day. This went on for weeks. I’m a bit obsessive that way. (Being obsessive is extremely helpful if you wish to excel in audio. It may in fact be the most important personality characteristic of them all.)

I consider them to be one of the greatest Art Rock bands in the history of the world. The general public and probably most audiophiles would surely cast their vote for Avalon as the band’s masterpiece. I much prefer their eponymous first album, Stranded, Country Life and Siren to the more “accessible” music found on Avalon.

To be fair, that’s splitting hairs, because any of those five titles are absolute Must Own Albums that belong in any serious popular music collection.