Country Life (Roxy Music album)
| Country Life | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Roxy Music | ||||
| Released | 15 November 1974 | |||
| Recorded | July 1974–August 1974 | |||
| Studio | AIR Studios, London | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 41:42 | |||
| Label |
Island, Polydor (UK) Atco, Reprise (US) |
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| Producer | Chris Thomas, John Punter, Roxy Music | |||
| Roxy Music chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Country Life | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |  |
| Pitchfork Media | (9.4/10) |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Robert Christgau | B+ |
Country Life is the fourth album by the English rock band Roxy Music, released in 1974 and reaching No. 3 in the UK charts. It also made No. 37 in the United States, their first record to crack the Top 40 there. The album is considered by many critics to be among the band's most sophisticated and consistent. Jim Miller in his review for Rolling Stone wrote "Stranded and Country Life together mark the zenith of contemporary British art rock." Band leader Bryan Ferry took the album's title from the British rural lifestyle magazine Country Life.
In 2003, the album was ranked number 387 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It was one of four Roxy Music albums that made the list (For Your Pleasure, Siren and Avalon being the others).
The opening track, "The Thrill of It All", was an up-tempo rocker that further developed the style of songs like "Virginia Plain" (1972) and "Do the Strand" (1973); it included a quote from Dorothy Parker's poem "Resume": "You might as well live". Eddie Jobson's violin dominated the heavily-flanged production of "Out of the Blue", which became a live favourite. Esoteric musical influences were betrayed by the German oom-pah band passages in "Bitter-Sweet", the Elizabethan flavour of "Triptych" and the lighthearted, boogie-blues, Southern rock edge to "If It Takes All Night".
"Casanova" was singled out for praise by a number of critics as a more cynical and hard-rocking number than the usual Roxy Music fare. Like the earlier "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" (1973), it was seen as a critique of the hollowness of the contemporary jet set, and contained further instances of Bryan Ferry's idiosyncratic word association ("Now you're nothing but / Second hand in glove / With second rate"). A re-recorded version, more mellow than the original, appeared on Ferry's 1976 solo album Let's Stick Together.
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