Roxy Music ‎– Stranded

Is there an oversized LP jacket version much like the others in this edition. Mine happens to be standard jacket size. No lyrics either.

Great mastering but as others have commented, this whole series of reissues suffers from bad pressings. I’ve tried 2 copies of this album from 2 different retailers and both have an annoying scratch on the final track of side 1 that continually clicks through the quiet intro.

Excellent Japanese reissue. Very punchy drums, driving bass and nice clarity. Nice deep, thick-textured sound. Warm and atmospheric. Flawless pressing with a dead quiet background.

This original German version of this LP is unique for two reasons. First, the colours in "ROXY MUSIC" on the front are reversed - red on yellow instead of yellow on red.
And it is one of only two original LP releases with a lyric inner sleeve (the first ones for the band), with white lettering on black. An Italian version (ILPS 19252) has a lyric sleeve with black lettering on white.

Is this the same as Roxy Music - Stranded? Entries look pretty much identical...

just noticed today while playing, looking at sleeve and the credits that the model on cover (Marilyn Cole) is not credited at all (the bloke who did her make up is though!), and reminds me that their sleeves while striking always crystalised the sexist nature of the 70s (even if these are slightly tongue in cheek)

Their second great album after 'For Your Pleasure'. Yes, I know that it isn't actually their second album per se, but I'm not that keen on the experimental first album. Opinions, eh? Anyway, this one contains probably their very best single in 'Street Life' together with classic tracks such as 'A Song For Europe' and 'Sunset'. Eddie Jobson comes in and fills the gap left by Eno and makes a really good fist of things. Eno himself has gone on record to declare this his favourite Roxy album even though he's not on it. Interestingly Johnny Gustafson on bass fails to make the pictures of the individual band members on the inner cover; conspiracy theory, or what? 😉

Back in the 70’s, before Rolling Stone magazine began quietly suggesting that the Roxy Music albums weren’t that good, they said, “Two British bands are genuinely stretching the dimensions of pop music. One, 10 C.C., has already found a degree of popularity in the States. Roxy Music has been unable to cross the Atlantic so far, but that should change with this album. Stranded is one of the most exciting and entertaining British LPs of the Seventies.”

At this same time, another magazine said, “Andy MacKay, whose searing sax made Mott the Hoople’s “All The Way From Memphis” an American favorite, has written the tune for “A Song For Europe,” the most impressive track on the album, an awesome example of self-disciplined hard rock.” Yet it was unconventional songs like this that the rags would later cite at too arty, too progressive, cumbersome, and failing in their nature to define a cohesive album. And that just about sums up where the world at large stood with Roxy Music … loving the accessible material and hating the experimental more heavy, nearly instrumental aspects.

It was 1973, the woman on the cover of Stranded was Brian Ferry’s girlfriend Marilyn Cole, playmate model of the year, with this being the first Roxy album where Ferry was not the solo creator of all of the material. Yet even without the presence of Mr. Eno, this was a solid body of work, a change in style certainly, yet still, all of the members seem assured of themselves and their tasks, creating another dialectic album infused with juxtapositions, with Brian Eno saying that Stranded was his personal favorite Roxy album, even if he’d not taken part. Take the bouncy innovative sound of “Street Life,” smack that up against the risk taking soundscape of the epic “A Song For Europe,” and while perhaps self-deprecating, the material certainly creates a sensuous emotional atmosphere laced around those pop singles.

The album does embrace the completeness of a street-life, at the time, Brian Ferry was at the height of his game, an unsettling lounge lizard crooner, while Phil Manzanera is nothing short of a magical creative genius with his solo and riffing, Paul Thompsons drumming is resolved and powerful, and Andy MacKay, while on sax or oboe could do no wrong, sounding plaintive haunting and specularly wonderful, and then there’s the lushness the new recruit Eddie Jobson brings to the mix where together they created what can only be described as a dense British version of Phil Spector’s wall of sound.

Seriously, I fully realize that most Roxy Music albums can be challenging at some point as they spin out on your turntable, though Roxy have always bent the rules, sliding somewhere between great rock songs and progressive music. And to that I always suggest to listeners that they should save the songs that ride best in their own back pockets and create their a personal compilation. With that in mind, I can tell you that with eight studio albums, there are no less than forty-two tracks that are intoxicatingly accessible, so completing that compilation should be a no-brainer, with Stranded offering up three of those “Mother Of Pearl,” “Serenade” and “Street Life” … all songs so good that they in and of themselves justify the purchasing the album.

If forced to focus on the shortcomings of the album, I’d say, “Unquestionably Stranded is a solid release, though it does get a bit weighted by some of the gloomy torch songs, along with a rather long and labored gospel number smack dab in the middle, a song I could certainly do without, where Ferry’s vibrato drones on too long and too pointedly.”

Review by Jenell Kesler