Roxy Music: Country Life (half-speed master, gloss-laminated finish) [VIRGIN]

Why you'll love it

This edition was cut at half speed from the original quarter-inch tapes at Abbey Road Studios, on 180g vinyl in a gloss-laminated sleeve. Country Life reached No. 3 in the UK and became the band's first US top 40 album.

This edition

• Half-speed master
• Cut at Abbey Road Studios
• 180g vinyl
• Gloss-laminated sleeve
• Lyric inner sleeve
• Remastered
• Pressed in Germany

About the album

Bryan Ferry took the album's title from Country Life, the British magazine of rural living, and then made a record about as rural as a Mayfair cocktail bar. Recorded at Air Studios in London in the summer of 1974 and produced by John Punter with the band, the fourth Roxy Music album is many critics' pick for their most sophisticated and consistent.

"The Thrill of It All" opens at full gallop, "All I Want Is You" became a UK hit, and Eddie Jobson's flanged violin drives "Out of the Blue," which became a live favourite. "Three and Nine" looks back fondly at cinema trips for three shillings and ninepence, "Bitter-Sweet" slips into German oom-pah passages, "Casanova" rocks harder than usual, and "Prairie Rose" closes with an ode to Texas. The two women on the cover also helped Ferry with the German words for "Bitter-Sweet" and got credited for translation.

Rolling Stone's Jim Miller paired it with Stranded as the peak of British art rock, and it later made the magazine's 500 greatest albums list. Few records have ever made a magazine about hedgerows sound this glamorous.

Also at Kops: more Roxy Music on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Virgin (cat# RMLP4), a reissue of the 1974 album.