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With FOR YOUR PLEASURE, the second Roxy Music album, the band began to explore a little more of the "dark side" of the glamorous world that had become their lyrical and musical playground. Even the cover art suggests this division: a preposterously posed women walking a snarling panther is watched by singer Bryan Ferry, decked out in chauffeur's livery and removed from the action, merely observing. Musically, this decay is examined most clearly in "In Every Dream Home a Heartache," a disturbing tale about an inflatable sex doll that, at times, suggests some of the creepier moments from the Doors catalogue--"The End" in particular. Opening with the spectacular debauch of "Do the Strand," the album pulls no punches--"It burns your blue jeans, you know what I mean" indeed! Together with "Editions of You," it shows the band moving through the similar territory inhabited by "Virginia Plain" (from ROXY MUSIC), quasi-rock shot through with squalling saxophones. The nine-minute slow burn of "The Bogus Man" displays Paul Thompson's solid drumming to great effect, while the rest of the band fleshes things out with a not exactly scary, but decidedly "off" atmosphere. Another classic.
Reviews
Rolling Stone (4/11/02, p.107) - Ranked #30 in Rolling Stone's "50 Coolest Records" - "...Ferry's most pathetic erotic idolatries...it sounds good..." Q (6/00, p.75) - Ranked #33 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" Q (9/99, pp.122-3) - 4 stars (out of 5) - "...a more consistent, together album, by definition less weird than the first, but Ferry's world of high-class ladies...is always couched in screeching guitar and atmospherics....sophisticated rock songs..." NME (Magazine) (9/18/93, p.19) - Ranked #27 among The Greatest Albums Of The '70s. Pitchfork (Website) - "Throughout the album, the band is puffed up with ideas, and desperate to make an impression. Ferry summarizes his passions for artifice and postmodern thought in manifestos..."
