M.E.N. Arena (Jun 20)

AS THAT grinding intro to Both Ends Burning struck up, Bryan Ferry hunched down in his silver tuxedo jacket, and duck-walked slowly from the wings, arriving at the microphone with impeccable timing to deliver the first line.

Behind him, a screen covering the backdrop flashed an image of Ferry in monochrome, as if to reinforce the notion of a star whose appeal is more Hollywood than rock and roll.

At 55, he's still got it - the hair, the male-model figure, the aristocratic yet bad-boy image.

But who would believe that Roxy Music, touring for the first time in 18 years, was just about the serpentine charisma of the front man would have been disabused of that idea by this show at the Manchester Evening News Arena.

Any suspicion also that this was a cynical effort to squeeze another pay day out of the back catalogue was dispelled in the first lusty parping of Andy Mackay's sax, the first searing riff from Phil Manzanera's guitar and the conviction behind that seductively wobbly croon of Ferry's.

Roxy Music were here to celebrate not the smooth Avalon era of early yuppiedom, but instead their spiky, adventurous art rock of the early seventies. Oboe and queasy guitar heralded Out Of The Blue like the intro to some hellish medieval dance, with Ferry delivering up the lyric with alluring sneer before giving a foppish half-curtsey.

Changing to white dinner jacket, Ferry gave a phenomenally powerful reading of the grand anglo-French ballad Song For Europe. Oh Yeah reminded us of the silken rhythms which were the hallmark of later Roxy, but In Every Dream Home A Heartache brought us back to the stark, challenging early work - one of the most disturbing pop songs ever to gain mainstream appeal and certainly the only love song written for an inflatable doll.

Virginia Plain sounded, suprisingly, just like the original. Brian Eno may have chosen not to join this reunion tour, but the archaic synthesizer technology was there, creating the familiar bustling sound. As Love Is The Drug set the fans moving in earnest, dancing girls in Moulin Rouge outifts came on stage.

Around the band, the set was a muted combination of fake foliage and ivy-covered garden wall, as if these artiest of rockers were playing in the grounds of a stately home.

Reinforcing that impression came the encore Do The Strand. ''Weary of the waltz - bored of the beguine,'' inquired Ferry, relishing the words like a rock and roll Noel Coward.

Tweet