Style and Themes
The opening track, "The Thrill of it All", was an up-tempo rocker that further developed the style of songs like "Virginia Plain" (1972) and "Do the Strand" (1973); it included a quote from Dorothy Parker's poem "Resume": "You might as well live". Edwin Jobson's violin dominated the heavily-flanged production of "Out of the Blue", which became a live favourite. Esoteric musical influences were betrayed by the German oom-pah band passages in "Bitter-Sweet", the Elizabethan flavour of "Triptych" and the lighthearted, boogie-blues, Southern rock edge to "If It Takes All Night".
"Casanova" was singled out for praise by a number of critics as a more cynical and hard-rocking number than the usual Roxy Music fare. Like the earlier "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" (1973), it was seen as a critique of the hollowness of the contemporary jet set, and contained further instances of Bryan Ferry's idiosyncratic word association ("Now you're nothing but / Second hand in glove / With second rate"). A re-recorded version, more mellow than the original, appeared on Ferry's 1976 solo album Let's Stick Together.
The final track, "Prairie Rose", was an ode to Texas and one of its daughters, Jerry Hall, Ferry's new girlfriend, who was soon to appear on the cover of Roxy Music's fifth album, Siren (1975), and later in the video to Ferry's hit single "Let's Stick Together".
Country Life included Roxy Music's fourth single, "All I Want Is You" b/w "Your Application's Failed", which reached #12 in the UK charts. An edited version of "The Thrill of It All", with the same B-side, was released in the United States. The album was released on Atco Records, a division of Atlantic Records.
Read more about this topic: Country Life (Roxy Music album)
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