These Foolish Things

Released just six months after Roxy Music’s second album, These Foolish Things features the whole band (minus the recently departed Brian Eno) and is for all intents and purpose a Roxy Music covers set. The music has all the space-bound dazzle of the early Roxy albums, but there's no question that Bryan Ferry's the star of this show. His flair for theatricality is sincere rather than ironic, which is why he can get away with such a wonky program of songs. Rock critics bemoaned the fact that Ferry was butchering their sacred cows (Beatles, Dylan, Stones) by turning them into glam rock dance songs and putting them alongside a cover of Leslie Gore’s camp classic “It’s My Party.” But Ferry’s love for these tunes is genuine—he simply approaches them with the vision of a cabaret crooner rather than that of the introspective troubadours who were so popular in 1973. Who else could turn Bob Dylan’s “Hard Rain” into a ripping fun rock tune? Yet for all his high-class glitz, Ferry is at heart a quavering soul man, as evinced by swelling renditions of “The Tracks of My Tears,” “Piece of My Heart," and “Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever.”