21/07/2025
This year, Every Sunday Evening, Album Rock WXYG, The GOAT will feature a full album at 8:00 PM from the halcyon musical days of 1975. 1975 was one of the top Years in Album Rock history. Another year of tough choices every week. So many great ones to choose from.
We hope you’ll tune in the evening of July 27th for “Siren”, the fifth studio album by Roxy Music, released in 1975 by Atco Records in the United States.
“Siren” produced the singles "Love Is the Drug" and "Both Ends Burning", which peaked at numbers two and 25 respectively on the UK Singles Chart. "Love Is the Drug" became Roxy Music's highest-charting single in the US.
In 2003, Siren was ranked number 371 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The cover features band member Bryan Ferry's soon-to-be-girlfriend, model Jerry Hall, on rocks near South Stack, Anglesey. Graham Hughes, working during August 1975, took the cover photo directly below the central span of the bridge on a south-side slope. He worked from sketches produced by Antony Price, with photography featuring Hall striking various poses. The idea for the location was Bryan Ferry's, after he saw a TV documentary about lava flows and rock formations in Anglesey, in which South Stack was heavily featured.
In a contemporary review of Siren for Melody Maker, critic Allan Jones praised it as "a superb album, striking the listener immediately with a force and invention reserved only for the most special musical experiences". He noted a "crispness and vitality" in Chris Thomas's production, which he felt showcased "the sense of adventure and cavalier spirit which marked their early recordings, an impetuosity which had been absent from their recent work."
Rolling Stone writer Simon Frith highlighted the album's more "focused" lyrical imagery and streamlined production, noting "less synthesized clutter, fewer sound effects, more straight solo trading." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice found the album's more pop-leaning sound to be revelatory: "Of course, Roxy Music albums have always had hooks, but 'Street Life' and 'Virginia Plain' never told us as much about Roxy's less accessible music as 'Love Is the Drug'". He ranked it the 11th best album of 1975 in his year-end "Dean's List". Siren placed at number 13 on The Village Voice's 1975 Pazz & Jop critics' poll.
Critic Greil Marcus included Siren in the appendix of his 1979 book Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, with the following accompanying write-up: "Don Juan Faces Life: With the band hitting the limits of the music that grew from Rubber Soul.
Siren remains one of Roxy Music's most critically acclaimed albums. Critic Dave Marsh described Siren in 1983 as "Roxy's masterpiece, calling the listener back by virtue of its finely honed instrumental attack and compelling lyrical attitude". In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that Roxy Musicmproduced "a thematic consistency that worked in [the album's] favor" and elevated it "into the realm of classics".
Rob Sheffield refers to Siren as "the first Roxy Music album without any failed moments" in 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide.
Vibe Magazine included it in its list of the 100 essential albums of the 20th century, describing it as a fusion of "the esoteric murk of early Roxy" and "the aching, ardently romantic tone that defines their later work".
This Roxy Music LP is spellbindingly brilliant from beginning to end. Ferry's vox and lyrics are pure magic. Manzanera's guitar is the stuff of legends. Mackay, Thompson, and Gustafson prove their skilled musicianship matches Ferry's style well, as does Edwin Jobson's incredible work with keyboards, strings, and synthesizers. The iconic opening track, 'Love Is The Drug,' brought the band Top 40 accolades, and the eight following tracks prove this album's genius and sublimely demonstrate the band's polished musicality. The dark romanticism of 'Sentimental Fool,' 'Could It Happen to Me?' and 'Just Another High' put Roxy Music into the dreamiest, opiated euphoric realm of modern Progressive music without succumbing to nightmarish sound or oddball lyricism. Own this disc if you're into top-shelf Art Pop. This record is foundational and, after four decades, sounds as vital now as it did upon its release.
Tune In and Turn On the evening of July 27th, and every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM for The GOAT'S "The Long Play with Al Neff”.
