Roxy Music brought their 50th anniversary tour to MGM – 9/17

Bryan Ferry and the reunited Roxy Music swept into Boston for a packed show at Fenway’s new MGM Music Hall.

The last time Roxy Music played Boston, prior to this year’s big 50th anniversary run, was no less than two decades and four Pavilion name changes ago. That’d be back in the days of FleetBoston, when I was an elementary schooler. So suffice to say that it’s been a minute.

That tour was itself a reunion effort, following the band’s initial 1983 dissolution and coinciding with their 30th anniversary. Not many ensembles get to regroup for both the 30 and 50 milestones, so for historical significance alone, Saturday’s show was a must-see. And even though frontman Bryan Ferry hits the road with some regularity and plenty of Roxy songs in his setlists, the chance to see their classic catalog performed with most of its classic lineup doubled this night down as essential.

The band’s ten-year run of albums – from 1972’s glam-inflected self-titled to 1982’s impossibly suave swan song Avalon – are a collectively foundational art-rock text, boundlessly creative and influential upon countless acts to follow. That they tapped Annie Clark’s St. Vincent – a luminary artist with no shortage of Roxy Music in her veins – to open this year’s tour makes perfect sense.

I say this to illustrate a point, but Clark was not actually present for Saturday’s Boston date. In one of a few odd twists to this particular show, a presumed radius clause stemming from St. Vincent’s opening slot with the Red Hot Chili Peppers across the street at Fenway the week prior meant that she sat this one out. The show also wound up relocating from an ambitious TD Garden booking to a cozier MGM, which suddenly made tickets a hot commodity, then caused a mass commotion as Garden ticketholders (apparently told that no action was required on their part) realized that the box office needed to issue each of them a new assigned seat at the door. Not the smoothest night for Boston’s newest live music room, but so these things go.

Once the sell-out crowd did finally make its way inside, they were greeted by an equally packed stage for Roxy’s expanded lineup. The band’s core remaining members – Ferry, guitarist Phil Manzanera, drummer Paul Thompson and woodwind wielder Andy Mackay – were augmented by a bassist, second percussionist, second saxophonist, second guitarist, pair of keyboardists and trio of backup singers, not to mention some enormous video screens. From the first note of “Re-Make/Re-Model” (which also opens the band’s first record), the value of those extra trimmings was evident, as the band took its audience on an immaculately composed and visualized trip.

No corner of the songs went overlooked, as the band-plus went to work on detailed but not overly busied arrangements. The approach particularly suited the lush sophisti-pop of the catalog’s latter half, but lent muscle to the earlier songs too. Musicianship across the sizable board sparkled all night, and Ferry – whose distinctive croon still sounds great – conducted charismatically without having to say much at all.

If there was any drawback to the set, it was the sense that things were almost too composed. Part of this, undoubtedly, originated from a curious lack of volume in the house, particularly from where I wound up watching upstairs. Not every show needs to rival a death metal band cramming full stacks into a dive bar, but I want to hear a little bit of punch in a live mix. The several subdued Avalon cuts – including its majestic title track and one of the band’s signature hits, “More Than This” – felt a tad muted. Thusly, it was the night’s more revved-up moments, such as when the eerie blow-up doll ode “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” careened from coiled tension to full-band attack, that turned out to be its highlights.

Volume aside (and perhaps some slight setlist tweaks, depending on which part of the band’s arc one is most dialed into), the show was an impressive one, exhibiting a band with love for both their music and the audience that’s sustained them for half a century now. Perhaps they’ll be back for a 60th-year run, but for now I’ll consider myself lucky to have caught a glimpse.

See photos from the evening below.