Chanel Ferry

by Chris Roberts

Melody Maker, 7th November 1987

Bryan Ferry - Bête Noire - Virgin

WE seem to be clutching at any old backyard anti-pop screech in search of the fresh and new, thus ending up with The Jesus and Springsteen Chain, the AR Kane Gang, and the Hersham Pet Shop Boys. Where we perhaps ought to try looking for differentness is towards the classy aliens, the distinctive born outsiders. Thus Sylvian's new lagoon, the ever-so-yearning bit in Donna Summer's "Dinner With Gershwin" where she goes "so close just as close as I can get", and of course Bjork's "Birthday", have licked God's toenails with an aplomb to shame the rest of the year's laborious runts. We need aesthetics and lazy instinct more than ever before if we're to stick an arm up and catch the albatross as we drown. And right here is where old Uncle Bry starts praying again.

As far removed from Pop Will Eat Itself as is Catherine Deneuve from Su Pollard, "Bête Noire" is slim, glacial, and smells sublime. Radical, no, but a generation whose style icons are Paula Yates and Jonathan Ross desperately need a considered demonstration of knowing class, the sophistry of old-style romantic bluff, if we're to see champagne and roses outlive Dirty Den and Atari.

With "Boys and Girls", Ferry reached the zenith of his vagueness. It was the least eventful record of all time. As such, one could only pan it, then after cooling down, hold it up to the light and marvel at its perfect lack of any emoting. It was a muted sigh, not even a gasp, a decade (more) since he tried to put it into words on "Mother of Pearl."

The '87 remodel, starting with "Limbo" (ha!), hovers slyly, waiting, observing, winking once so quickly you can't be sure you didn't imagine it. And as his doddering peers try everything from hapless hip-hop to whorish haircuts, Bry just ropes in some dickhead indie guitarist called Johnny Marr, knowing this will win him fifty thousand credibility units, then orders him to play Manzanera on mandrax. Relax! A few titles with chic rugged-but-elegant connotations - "The Right Stuff", "Seven Deadly Sins", "Kiss and Tell" - and we're home and moist. The clicking of typewriters, the coo of lust from Siedah, Tawatha, Fonzi, and Pine. That Ferry can slide this definitive absence of commitment, this crinkled twinkling narcissism, into the homes of millions, is a conjuring trick of devastating skill. "Bête Noire" is pure nihilism, a veiled zero in flames, a hedonistic long hot bath while Rome freezes over. It is utterly out of touch with reality. I recommend it without reservation.

Text copyright 1988 Melody Maker, used without permission.
With thanks to Grant Goggans.

Last Updated: 9 April 2008