Roxy Music's Siren (1975) is one of my very favourite recordings. It can be seen as a quasi-cinematic depiction of a love affair that goes wrong, but memorably so. The album begins and ends with songs that are clearly meant to show the effects of experience on a single theme: romance as narcotic. "Love Is the Drug" is quintessential Roxy - all the glamour and thrill of nightlife in a modern cityscape. The opening footsteps and engine roar are the perfect dramatic introduction to the band playing at the best level they had yet achieved on record. The track (and the entire album) features the virtuosic and rhythmically powerful bass-playing of Jon Gustafson, and the others show that they are capable of supporting him (which sounds easier than it is). It is probably one of Ferry's great vocals as well - his blue-blood persona capable of combining passion and humour - something Elvis could do too, although in a different way. The next track, "End of the Line" features an astonishing melody (Ferry as a writer reminds me of Smoky Robinson, who also finds unusual and beautiful melodies in seemingly simple harmonic settings), stirring violin by the multi-instrumentalist Eddie Jobson (who was twenty at the time) and a lyric that perfectly describes the emptiness left when sex turns to unrequited love, as it often does.
The segue to the next track, "Sentimental Fool", is a feature for the thoughtful and original guitarist Phil Manzanera, who once joked that he'd made a career out of making the guitar sound like everything but a guitar. The opening line ("Surely you cannot be leading me on...") is another melody worthy of note which leads quickly to the second section of this through-composed tripartite song ("through-composed" means that the song is not "strophic", i.e. it doesn't have choruses or repeated sections). The lyrics show an internal argument as the narrator alternately berates and absolves himself:

Sentimental fool
Knowing that fate is cruel,
You ought to forget it.
Yes, I know it's true,
I've seen what love can do,
But I don't regret it.
Oh, you silly thing--
Can't you see what's happening?
You're better without it.
No, that's not the case--
If you were in my place,
Then you wouldn't doubt it.
Sentimental fool
Who broke the golden rule,
You couldn't resist it.
Though it's all in vain,
I'd do it all again
Just to relive one minute.

The song is a masterpiece. And so it continues, each song as distinctive and beautiful as the one before, leading to the album's climax: "Just Another High", the inverse to "Love is the Drug" and an ambivalent, heart-breaking ending to the story and the album. The song's honesty and exploration of real experience and emotion is a splendid example of the Roxy Music difference - by which I mean the qualities that distinguish them from those who would cover the same territories in less thoughtful fashions. Did I mention that they're touring again?