"There are many things that I could say to try and comfort you, but I know the words you like to hear are simply, 'I love you'."
Roxy Music's fourth album (second post-Eno) just might be their artistic peak and sits in their discography as the last of their shape-shifting art-glam masterpieces. After Country Life, Roxy Music, despite some indisputable high points, would always seem more like a Bryan Ferry solo project than anything else. Like all of Roxy Music's best work, Country Life teeters on the edge of several creatively fertile contradictions. Chief among these is the lyrical tension between appearance and essence, glam facade and singer-songwriter introspection. This is even apparent in the infamous album cover, featuring two scantily-clad German models peering seductively into the camera while ironically covering various body parts in mock-modesty. This image can be read as a metaphor for the "upside down" introspection of songs like "Out of the Blue," which, on the surface, can seem like an ode to the transformative nature of love, but soon the song deconstructs this romantic notion, ironically stating, "throwaway lines often ring true." Roxy Music's initial run of albums are vastly underrated and contain some of the most ambitious popular music committed to tape during an era, the early seventies, rife with great music.
