Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music: Platinum Collection

Album Review

Along with Queen, Roxy Music started life as a glam band with a heavy prog rock edge before embarking on a long and successful career that saw a variety of musical styles touched upon. And while quite a few single-disc Roxy Music compilations have been released over the years (the best probably being the 1986 collection, Street Life: 20 Greatest Hits), most die-hard Roxy fans would argue that there were far too many highlights that fell through the cracks due to the limitation of a single disc. Hence, the 2004, triple-disc set The Platinum Collection. In conjunction with his Roxy work, singer Bryan Ferry also issued solo albums (which were quite stylistically similar to one another), and both are included in hefty portions here. Although never the superstars in the U.S. that they were in the U.K., Roxy Music and Ferry certainly had the tunes — the early classics "Virginia Plain," "Do the Strand," and "Love Is the Drug" — while latter day tracks as "More Than This," "Avalon," and a cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy" (the latter of which was a U.K. chart-topper) showed the group eventually mature into a more mainstream band. The Platinum Collection bridges the gap between the countless single-disc Roxy compilations, and the exhaustive Thrill of It All box set.