Bryan Ferry: Frantic
By Chris Turner
www.roxyrama.com - 9th March 2002
From the opening bars of 'It's All Over Now,
Baby Blue', it is clear that Frantic is a very different animal from it's
recent predecessors. Swept away are the drum machines and dance rhythms that
have so preoccupied Bryan in recent years. A new emphasis upon songs and structure
is apparent, taking its lead from earlier albums such as 'The Bride Stripped
Bare' or 'In Your Mind', rather than Boys and Girl's lush layers or the way
Mamouna's gossamer riffs were spun into songs. A different sound is obvious
too, with the accoustic instrumentation and upfront vocals that characterised
As Time Goes By now transferred to the rock idiom.
A punchy guitar sound and bluesy harmonica
pervade the album, with Ferry's plaintive vocals very forward in the mix.
The familiar Ferry instrumental interplay is still here, but the individual
instruments appear more urgent and better defined. Co-producers Rhett Davies
and Colin Good have created a spacier, more expansive sound than the 56-track
claustophobia which so stifled much of Taxi and Mamouna.
'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' - a Bob Dylan cover and the single release in Europe - sets the scene. Interpretations
of Dylan songs have served Ferry well, from his breathtakingly effective deconstruction
of 'Hard Rain' in 1973, through the sensitive interpretation of 'It Ain't
Me Babe' on 'Another Time, Another Place' to the two Zimmerman songs which
appear on Frantic. 'Baby Blue' is a hard driving version, the accoustic guitar
and bebop piano underpinning former Johnny Kidd and the Pirate's stalwart
Mick Green's staccato rhythm guitar. There are nice contributions from the
string section, some lavish slide guitar, and Ferry's own wailing blues harp
and taut Steve Harley-style vocal. It's a departure for Ferry, more accessible
and immediate than recent singles, and will probably garner some airplay from
the baby boomer radio stations.
Second track 'Cruel'
continues the uptempo trend. Ferry's angry rant against the miseries of the
modern world fairly rattles along, Ferry rails against the misery of mundane
lives and loves, the hole in the ozone layer and the demise of the American
bison (I kid you not!) This song is this first of a series of quirky co-writes
with former Eurythmic Dave Stewart. Propelled by a fat bass sound and dustbin-lid
drums, the punchy power-chord guitar and (dare I say) frantic soloing make
for a fine cohesive effort. The Native American chanting at the end was a
nice touch...
Don Nix's modern blues classic 'Goin'
Down' steps up next. Green's choppy guitar virtuosity almost rescues
this rather meandering song as Ferry moans and wails over the top. Sadly what
results is little more than a tepid Dire Straits pastiche, but ultimately
the song fails only on its uneventfulness, rather than a lack of effort on
the players' part.
Ferry and Stewart's second composition on Frantic
- 'Goddess of Love' - must have had serious consideration
as single material. The song takes the type of guitar sound David Williams
gave to much of Mamouna, but uses it to much better effect. The Bo Diddley
riffs chatter and clatter as counterpoint to the shimmering waterfall synths,
as the ever-present harp wails. By his own admission the Nineties were a difficult
time for Ferry lyrically, but using Marilyn as his muse the magic returns
again. Ferry offers a bitter paean to his own ultimate goddess - 'You tear
my heart out....when you walk out...never a day goes by...when I don't cry...'
The perennial Ferry themes of loss and self-loathing are still apparent, and
used to good effect here...
The second Dylan cover, 'Don't
Think Twice, It's Alright' is a rare excursion into minimalism for
Ferry. Just as the heavily-laden 'The Only Face' from Mamouna escaped its
burdens when it appeared in stripped-down form on the 'As Time Goes By' tour,
so this song uses a sparse arrangement to great effect. The otherwise excellent
Colin Good's jazz heritage doesn't always work when the going gets 'rocky'
but here he is in superlative form, his nimble keyboard work gives Ferry a
platform for perhaps his best vocal on the album. The last two years of relentless
touring have reinforced my perception that Ferry's pipes are still a viable
instrument, and the performances here do much to confirm this.
'Nobody Loves Me' is a triumph. Nicely patient when it needs to be, it shows its lumbering muscularity
at other times. Ferry's broken-hearted vocal takes centre-stage while the
military paradiddles and the flak from the barbed-wire guitars crackle all
around him. Ferry's schtick has always been to peddle his line in angsty world-weariness,
wearing his vulnerability openly, but here the chiming intervention of Spedding's
fluid guitar heroism breaks him out of his cycle of self-pity.
'Ja Nun Hons Pris' is something of an an oddity. The mediaeval song, reputed to have been written
by King Richard the Lionheart is reproduced in authentic fashion, but at first
sounds out of place in the context of the songs around it. It's only when
one picks up on the first line of the next song - 'in days gone by...there
was a King...' - that the linkage becomes apparent.
'Fool For Love' is another of the Stewart collaborations. In an earlier incarnation this song
thundered along to little effect but now, augmented by a newly acquired bridge
and a more leisurely pace, the song is less shackled. Many of Ferry's songs
can be characterised by their contrived moments of drama; their contrasts
ofure between harshness and subtlety; and Fool For Love follows this
template to epitome. On this occasion though, this confection's richness leaves
you just a little unsatisfied.
Ferry's love of the Leadbelly folk song 'Goodnight
Irene' is well-known. He originally performed the song when with his
first band 'The Banshees' in 1964 and later selected it as one of his Top
Ten tunes for a radio show broadcast in 1986. Having almost made the track
liting for Taxi, the song finally appears now, almost a decade later. There's
no doubt that the song is well performed. Ferry's vocal is especially good,
and the hoedown violin and deadpan redneck backing vocals work well, but there
is undoubtedly something a little incongruous about its appearance here.
Stark themes and an equally stark setting distinguish
'Hiroshima', which is apparently influenced by
Alain Resnais' disturbing 1959 film, Hiroshima Mon Amour, about a menage a
trois set against the background of the devastated Japanese city. Ferry is
the classic pasticheur, selecting cultural references familiar to the casual
onlooker to engage them in his work, as epitomised by Bitter Sweet, his parody
of the 1930's Cabaret Berlin described by Isherwood in Berlin Stories. In
Hiroshima Ferry again presses all the right cultural buttons, but one is never
sure whether the references have a coherent thread, or are simply elements
of a cleverly assembled scrapbook. The oriental voices and feedback guitar
provided by Radiohead-er Jonny Greenwood embellish the impassive vocal and
austere aural landscape.
Another signal of Ferry's return to lyrical form
is indicated by the appearance of 'San Simeon'.
The title is again a film reference, to the 1930's home of film and newspaper
magnate W Randolph Hearst, so cruelly satirised by Orson Welles in the film
Citizen Kane. Ferry's description of the lavishness of San Simeon is accompanied
by the innuendo of implied sexuality. An earlier version of this song was
more overt in its coverage of these themes, but even in ths bowdlerised version,
the implication of 'fun and games' amid the opulence is highly apparent. 'Tiger-skin
rug love...I stroke - you bite me...executive leather...upholstered tightly...'
The crisp, economic lyric and the almost sotto-voce vocal with its female
double tracking works effectively and the song conjures some striking imagery.
From the sublime to the...well, not ridiculous
exactly, but Bryan's version of the old Drifters song 'One
Way Love' is perhaps the most overtly commercial thing he has done
in his entire career. It took a few listens to come to terms with the sheer
pop audacity and unexpectedness of this cover, and I wonder where he feels
he is going with this. Ferry tries hard to give some authority to what is
simply a trite pop ditty, but ultimately it's a losing battle. Nevertheless,
it's good to know that the Old Man still has the capacity to surprise his
audience, and doubtless this song will have its followers.
If the album had ended there, one might have
been left with a slightly empty feeling, but fortunately Ferry has saved a
masterpiece for the end. 'I Thought' is perhaps
one of Bryan's greatest achievements. The portents were not good. Ferry's
last work with co-writer Brian Eno on Mamouna had resulted in a couple of
tepid remixes and the vapid 'Wildcat Days' - best forgotten. Neither does
the opening of 'I Thought' bode well, with karaoke organ and tea dance drums
setting off the waltz-time ditty at pedestrian pace. However, as the Warm
Jets-era guitar and swirling keyboards herald the first line of the vocal
the song begins its patient transformation into an extraordinary concoction
of pub piano, Duane Eddy guitar, Midnight Cowboy harmonica, crashing cymbals,
marimbas, ice-cream-van-siren synths, oh, and a dozen other quirky sounds
...all with a hint of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and the Ugly thrown
in....it shouldn't work...but it does - quite brilliantly. Above all this
is another of those poignant yearning lyrics about the search for 'impossible
true love' that were Ferry's stock-in trade for so many years, and delivered
in a sensitively rendered performance by the Great Man.
Ferry has spent much of the last three years
rebuilding his career from the wreckage of the mid 1990's when commercial
success eluded him, and a succession of broken projects hindered his progress.
The album 'As Time Goes By' which initially appeared to be something of a
cul-de-sac in his career, has in fact acted as the catalyst for his renaissance.
His Grammy nomination for the album; the success of the accompanying tour
with it's emphasis on acoustic performance and rejection of drum machines
and programming; and the sheer warmth of the reception the reunited Roxy Music
received has rebuilt his confidence.
Frantic continues his rebirth. It's an imperfect
album, but with many, many moments of greatness. The return to more familiar
song structures is welcome, and pleasingly it is the self-penned songs which
work best. It's reassuring too that Ferry has assembled a coterie of talented,
familiar and trusted collaborators around him. He so often has done his best
work in such circumstances. It all bodes well for the next album, of newer
material, which sits in the archives ready to be mixed and released.
