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Pitchfork’s Review of the 2012 Roxy Music CD Box Set

More of the Music of Roxy Music

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Roxy Music

Tom Ewing has written a beautiful piece here about one of my favorite bands of all time.

This career-spanning box set to mark Roxy Music’s 40th anniversary is often startling, usually wonderful, and more affecting than expected. It’s also fascinating as the story of a gradual hardening of an elegant, enigmatic persona, of Bryan Ferry’s transformation from art-school pop star to self-made sphinx.  

In their 1970s heyday, Roxy Music enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success, but even so, they and their art-school rock were admired more than trusted. American critics snipped at leader Bryan Ferry’s arch romanticism, while the Brit press considered the models Ferry squired and the suits he doffed and dubbed him “Byron Ferrari”. Almost everyone affirmed that the band were great, while disagreeing as to when, exactly. For some, the great achievement was 1982’s farewell, Avalon– impeccably designed pop for weary grown-ups. Others went a decade further back, to the early, playfully experimental albums Roxy released when Brian Eno was in the band, playing androgyne peacock to Ferry’s tailored lothario. Whether you see their development between those points as progress or cautionary tale, it’s easy to let this contrast define the band.

This box set of remasters to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary– not lavish, but thorough and reasonably priced– is an opportunity to break free of narrative and see what sets every phase of Roxy Music apart. The answer is Bryan Ferry, one of rock’s great, sustained acts of self-definition. In classic 70s style, like Bowie or Bolan, Ferry invented a pop star. A sybarite with a plummy, awkward croon, gliding through his own songs like they were parties he’d forgotten arriving at. A flying Dutchman of the jet set, doomed to find love but never satisfaction. Having worked his way into character over an album or two, he simply never left it, becoming more Bryan Ferry with every record and every year, whether performing or not.

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Bill Evans – Explorations

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bill Evans Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review. The last time we sat down to play some OJC copies of this recording we were underwhelmed. There may be some great sounding pressings out there, but we did not have any on hand and don’t want to commit the resources that would be needed to find them.

Our old commentary follows.

Outstanding sound throughout with both sides rating a solid Double Plus (A++) or close to it

The sound here is, above all, natural – the tonality is correct, and the recording sounds right for Riverside circa 1961

4 1/2 stars: “Explorations proves that the artist was worth waiting for no matter what else was going on out there. Evans, with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro, was onto something as a trio, exploring the undersides of melodic and rhythmic constructions that had never been considered by most… an extraordinary example of the reach and breadth of this trio at its peak.”

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Listening in Depth to McCartney

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul McCartney Available Now

The best tracks here have the quality of LIVE MUSIC in a way that not one out of a hundred rock records do. The music jumps right out of the speakers and fills up the room.

The album sounds like it’s recorded live in the studio, but of course that’s impossible, because Paul plays practically all the instruments himself! It just goes to show how good a multi-track studio recording can sound when done well. (More rock and pop recordings with live in the studio sound can be found here.)

Side Two

Oo You

The distorted guitar in a huge and reverberant room that leads off this side is one of my favorite “sounds” on any McCartney album. The bigger, richer and grungier the guitar sounds, the better.

Momma Miss America
Teddy Boy

This is a very tough track to get right. There is processing on Paul’s voice that some copies make a mess of, adding a kind of unpleasant resonance, which of course the better copies do not.

It’s a fairly simple arrangement: acoustic guitar, bass, voice and Linda’s backing vocals. When all of these things are in balance, the sound will be lovely. Paul’s voice, because of the processing I mentioned, doesn’t sound as natural as it does on other tracks, but it shouldn’t be irritating or disagreeable.

Singalong Junk
Maybe I’m Amazed

Another exceptionally hard track to get right. On a top copy the guitar solo will JUMP right out of your speakers. It should have the energy of LIVE MUSIC

Kreen-Akrore

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Joni Mitchell – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century. Uncompromising and iconoclastic, Mitchell confounded expectations at every turn; restlessly innovative, her music evolved from deeply personal folk stylings into pop, jazz, avant-garde, and even world music, presaging the multicultural experimentation of the 1980s and 1990s by over a decade. – Allmusic

Discography 1968-1991

1968 Song to a Seagull
1969 Clouds
1970 Ladies of the Canyon
1971 Blue – Top 100, TAS List
1972 For the Roses – Some of her best sound
1974 Court and Spark – Top 100, TAS List, her best sounding recording
1974 Miles of Aisles – Lovely analog sound
1975 The Hissing of Summer Lawns
1976 Hejira
1977 Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter
1979 Mingus
1980 Shadows and Light – Modern sound, a far cry from the Miles of Aisles
1982 Wild Things Run Fast – TAS List and a personal favorite
1985 Dog Eat Dog – Awful sound and music
1988 Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm – Maybe even worse
1991 Night Ride Home – Surprisingly good, but very hard to find these days and expensive to buy when you do

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Tears For Fears – Songs From The Big Chair

More of the Music of Tears For Fears

  • An incredible vintage UK pressing with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the first side and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the second side
  • Rich, spacious and lively, with an open, extended top end – this is the sound you’ve been waiting for from Tears for Fears
  • More great songs than practically any other record made in the ’80s – “Shout,” “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” and “Head Over Heels” are just a few of the better known hits from this, their breakthrough third album
  • 4 1/2 stars: “It is not only a commercial triumph, it is an artistic tour de force. And in the loping, percolating “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Tears for Fears perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the mid-’80s while impossibly managing to also create a dreamy, timeless pop classic. Songs From the Big Chair is one of the finest statements of the decade.”

This is a classic in the Tears for Fears canon, probably the album most people regard as their best. I myself prefer Seeds of Love, which should take nothing away from Big Chair — both are exceptional productions from the ’80s no matter how you look at them.

SFTBC went to Number One on the charts for a reason. There’s really not a bad song on either side and mostly absolutely brilliant ones.

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Listening in Depth to Romantic Warrior

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Return to Forever Available Now

Romantic Warrior is my favorite Jazz/Rock Fusion album of all time. As good as the music is, the sound is even better.

This is the Jazz/Rock Demo Disc that stands head and shoulders above the rest. In my experience, no record of this kind is more dynamic or has better bass. Not one.

Demo Disc doesn’t begin to do this kind of sound justice.

Simply put, not only is this one of the greatest musical statements of all time, it’s one of the great recording achievements. Few albums in the history of the world can lay claim to this kind of sonic power and energy.

But the Super Sound has a purpose, a raison d’etre. This is the kind of music that requires it; better yet, demands it. In truth, the sound is not only up to the challenge of expressing the life of the music on this album, it positively enhances it.

Just to take one example: Those monster Lenny White drum rolls that run across the soundstage from wall to wall may be a recording studio trick, but they’re there to draw your attention to his amazing powers, and it works! The drums are everywhere on this album, constantly jumping out of the soundfield and taking the music into the stratosphere where it belongs.

Side One

Medieval Overture

The grandiose opening of this record serves as an important sonic checkpoint, as well as a tipoff for the pyrotechnics to come. On the better copies Corea’s multi-layered, swirling synths occupy their own space, clearly separated from each other, not blurred and inarticulate as they are on the poorer pressings.

Also notice how much attack Lenny White’s drums have, especially in the more exposed sections. The transients are breathtakingly immediate. Run-of-the-mill copies tend to flatten Mr White, making his acrobatic playing seem two-dimensional and less-than-inspired. The best copies prove that nothing could be further from the truth.

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Genesis / Nursery Cryme

More of the Music of Genesis

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this vintage UK Charisma pressing was giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for
  • These sides have the bass, real rock energy and lovely midrange transparency that was missing from all others we played
  • For fans of the Classic Lineup involving Phil Collins and Steve Hackett — this being the first album with them on board — this Brit will show you a Nursery Cryme the likes of which you have never heard
  • If you own the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressing you are really in for a shock – that pressing is a smeary lifeless mess next to this LP (and don’t even get us started on the domestic copies)
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • “If Genesis truly established themselves as progressive rockers on Trespass, Nursery Cryme is where their signature persona was unveiled … these are the songs that showed what Genesis could do, and they still stand as pinnacles of what the band could achieve.”

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Carole King – Music

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • An early Ode pressing with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • The vocals are present and breathy, the piano and bass clear, not smeary or murky – this one was doing just about everything right
  • We had been thinking that Tapestry was the tough nut to crack in her catalog but it’s not even a contest – this one is five times as hard
  • We don’t imagine we’ll be tracking down too many copies of this so get it while you can!
  • 4 stars: “… time has shown this album to be one of her finest… her songwriting is still in peak form, and there are many highlights including ‘It’s Gonna Take Some Time’ (also made into a hit by the Carpenters) and ‘Song of Long Ago’ (with backing vocals by James Taylor).”

Superb sound on both sides for this, shall we say, “problematical” recording. Perhaps “challenging” is a better term. Either way, finding good sounding copies of this album is a real pain. Most pressings are shockingly bad.

So many copies were murky, smeary, and veiled that we considered giving up. Fortunately, there were a few copies that shone brightly above the rest and this copy is one of them!

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Sibilance Is a Bitch on Nick Of Time

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bonnie Raitt Available Now

We here present some advice on what to listen for to help you separate the best pressings of some of our favorite rock and pop records from those that are merely good.

On side two listen for the sibilance on Bonnie’s voice on Too Soon to Tell.

Some copies have gritty, spitty sibilance on her voice, while others keep the spit well under control, allowing much more of the silky quality of her vocal to be heard.

Sibilance is a great test for pressings that you may be comparing for sound quality. Sibilant pressings tend to be crudely mastered and that crude quality is sure to show up in other areas of the recording.

(Half-Speed mastered pressings are almost always spitty and should be avoided, for their sibilance problems as well as their many other often serious shortcomings, which we have documented in detail all over this blog.)

Also, pay special attention to how silky the cymbal crashes can be on the better copies.

We also recommend that you listen for how all the elements of the recording are clearly laid out and audible, never forced or hyped in any way. The sound can be surprisingly 3-D for a modern recording.

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Letter of the Week – “To think I spent all those years playing a record that was bright and edgy, none the wiser to matrix numbers and pressing variations.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Our good customer who goes by the handle ab_ba on the web wrote to us about his experience with the White Hot Stamper pressing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller he recently acquired.

Part one of his letter can be found here.

Here he tells us about the shootout he conducted, which included a “pricey Japanese pressing” and a pressing that the forums recommended as the “holy grail.”

A few weeks later, on the eve of the closing of the return window, I shot it out against the best of my other copies. They range from the copy I grew up with, one of the few records from childhood that I held onto, to a pricey Japanese pressing in great shape (purchased long ago, when I thought Japanese pressing were where it’s at), to some copies I’ve picked up over the years because they looked to be in good shape and they were just five bucks, and a pressing that the forums told me was the “holy grail.”

None stacked up to the white hot stamper. In fact, they really weren’t even close. Here’s what I found:

The copy I grew up with is bright and edgy. To think, I spent all those years playing and re-playing a record that was bright and edgy, none the wiser to matrix numbers and pressing variations.

Some other lucky kid back then was surely listening to the copy I now own. I wonder if he ever said to himself, “wow, there’s something about this record. It sounds really special.”

The pressing with a sought-after matrix code had phenomenal bass, but the vocals were recessed. I’d so easy to be impressed with those huge drums on Billie Jean, but that alone is not enough to tell you it’s a great pressing. A lot of pressings seem to get that right.

My Japanese pressing was clear and full. But too smooth. The guitars don’t bite. Also, it fatigued me by about halfway through the side. This is energetic music. It might exhaust you, but it doesn’t have to fatigue you. This is an example of where if you don’t have a white hot stamper to compare it to, you’ll just assume your version sounds as good as it can get.

Dear ab_ba,

Most Japanese pressings cater to the sound a mid-fi system would need to sound good and a hi-fi system would find disastrous. They are almost always made from dubbed tapes, which are then brightened up in the mastering phase since that is the sound that appeals to the Japanese market for some reason unknown to me. (Old school audio equipment — horn speakers and vintage tube electronics — would be my guess.)

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