Roxy Music

Manchester AO Arena

Swansong or not, it’s a triumphant reunion.

As Roxy Music celebrate the 50th anniversary of their game-changing debut album, there’s added piquancy to the proposal of If There Is Something that the grass was greener ‘when you were young’. Roxy were making records for only 11 of those 50 years, with a four-year gap midway through that period, but their legacy remains proud and boundless. That said, the arena audience seems split between those who want the pioneering art rock of the band’s breakthrough and those coveting the smooth sophistipop of the Avalon era. Roxy do all they can to please everybody, with the first hour reminding us how groundbreaking their early sound collages were –

In Every Dream Home A Heartache explodes into a shredding Phil Manzanera guitar solo – and the second sauntering through the arch, airy hits, dancing away the heartache.

Now aged 77, Bryan Ferry’s vocal range is fading, but that somehow adds to the drama of Roxy’s worldbuilding. A 13-piece band ensures the fantasies – of romance, of sci-fi, of pop music as an aesthetic Camelot – don’t falter, and the films and backdrops (drive-ins, flamingoes, millions of Warhol Marilyns) are dazzling. From the staccato stabs of Virginia Plain to the louche Love Is The Drug to a euphoric Editions Of You, Roxy’s reunion and possible swansong is a triumph, leaving us hoping that, somehow, there’ll be more than this.