rambling thoughts - sea breezes

The first Roxy Music album is stunning. More on this another day.

 

But I've just heard "Sea Breezes", the penultimate song on Roxy Music and despite me knowing this song for getting for 35 years now, it utterly floored me again. Mainly because I couldn't understand how Roxy thought they could get away with such a truly bizarre song, possibly the most bizarre on a very bizarre album!

 

Beautiful oboe work and gentle electric piano underpin Bryan Ferry’s very delicate and pretty opening section, though Eno’s otherworldly wooshes of VCS3 take the dreamy edge off the piece rather (this synth makes sounds that no-one else can replicate, even today, and it makes many early Roxy songs sound genuinely futuristic, even 40+ years on). Ferry sings at the top of his range, lending the song a ghostly croon which sounds like it's floated in from another world. Then the atonal, stop start second section crashes in with Paul Thompson playing random drum fills which have no relationship with the steady pulse of the bass whatsoever, as Phil Manzanera sounds like he’s throttling his guitar into making hideous death rattles, but Andy Mackay is still playing an extremely delicate oboe melody that again has nothing to do with what the rest of the band is playing. It’s incredible, baffling and still makes me think – what the hell were they thinking?

 

I mean, really – who on earth thought this could work? But, against all expectations it DOES work, and somehow, inexplicably, it’s utterly brilliant.

Also completely mad, but in a full on rock and roll runaway train kind of a way is the version of “Re-make / Re-model” from an August 1972 BBC In Concert. Drenched in VCS3 white noise courtesy of Professor Eno but absolutely anchored by Thompson’s thunderous drums this is perhaps even better than the studio version on the debut album. Everyone is pushing forwards, everyone is having the time of their lives, everyone is battling to be louder than everyone else. Again, though, it ought to be a total mess, but weirdly it isn't. The sheer power of the band is never more obvious and it’s probably the best example of why early Roxy were so totally thrilling.