Bryan Ferry - Bête Noire -Album Review
by Peter Kane
Sounds, 7th November 1987
Johnny's Marr's involvement with The Right Stuff, Mr Ferry's first outing for his new Virgin masters, is the only unpredictable note sounded for this, Ferry's seventh solo album. Well, someone's got to count. The blood, sweat and tears quotient is turned right down, the cash tap is left to run and run and we're left with a bucketful of distressed bubbles that fade away with the breeze. And believe me, they don't come much slighter than New Town or Zamba. As ever, an immaculate crease in the threads is displayed as we're offered that increasingly withered croon nine times over, set to a fashionable array of gurgling keyboards, humming guitars and vaguely danceable rhythms. Take Limbo or Kiss and Tell. Yes, it's time for that authentic café au lait soundtrack beloved of millions as they sit at home darning socks and dreaming of heady ostentation. One extra pinta or two?
Bête Noire itself is a curious little piece featuring gypsy violin, Parisian accordion and an introductory moan from the man suggesting that he's just sat in something rather cold and damp. The Ferry vocal stylings, in fact, now rub shoulders with the pastiche and so the coloured girls are called in to do whatever it is the coloured girls are supposed to do on occasions such as these: wail a bit and repeat the odd chorus here and there. But it's a feeling of lush and lazy moodiness that pervades.
So the middle-aged man takes the money and... waits for a passing cab.
