Bryan Ferry: Frantic

By Tim de Lisle

The Mail on Sunday, Review Section, 21st April 2002

Ferry Knows How To Keep Us Under His Influence

Awarded Four Stars out of Five - Recommended

The New Musical Express, which turns 50 this week, has marked the occasion with a list of the most influential pop artists of the period. As a PR exercise, it has been highly successful. As an actual catalogue of influence, it is hopeless.

The Smiths came top, having apparently had more impact than The Beatles (2nd) or Elvis Presley (14th). Oasis were sixth despite never having influenced anything bar the length of the male fringe. The Strokes came 17th, which is roughly where they should be in a list of the most influenced bands.

The two most influential rock bands of the past 30 years could only be found by looking down the list. The Velvet Underground came in 23rd, behind The Prodigy (obviously). And Roxy Music were 32nd, behind Manic Street Preachers. Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno, who have been cited as influences by everyone from Radiohead to Suede, should be consulting their lawyers.

Happily they have better things to do, such as promoting new CDs. In Ferry's case this doesn't happen often: Frantic is his first album containing new songs in eight years.

Ferry's claim to fame more recently has been as the celeb who nearly died when a crazed passenger tried to crash an airliner over Africa. At first Ferry revealed that he had been very frightened. Then, mindful of his obligations as a well-known lounge lizard, he changed his story, saying he had ben alarmed by the man's taste in socks.

If Ferry's life passed before his eyes that day, he certainly isn't saying: those hoping for a song called Nutter in Club World will be disappointed. But here Ferry's life flashes before out ears.

The 13 songs, half old and half new, are a time capsule of his career. There is gorgeous grown-up pop like Roxy Music did on Avalon, homely folk a la Ferry solo favourites such as Carrickfergus, spooky art-rock like In Every Dream Home A Heartache, gleeful covers of Dylan songs to recall These Foolish Things, and even a collaboration with Brian Eno, who left Roxy in 1973 and has only ever written one song with Ferry before.

The vocals too, present several Ferrys, from the suddenly aging husk of his last album, As Time Goes By (1999), to the half-ironic, half-romantic yodeller of the Seventies, to the smooth crooner of Avalon. The man who wrote This Is Tomorrow now brings you all his yesterdays. What you wont find here is the music Ferry was beavering away on in the Nineties - the effortlessly detailed mosaic rock of a man who, for all his gifts, was in danger of disappearing up his own perfectionism. This is relaxed, easy-going with few pretentions. Eight years? It feels as if it took a fortnight.

The quality is mixed but there are no duds. When Ferry's greatest hits are next collected, about four of these songs will be nudging the selectors. Goddess of Love, a big poppie ode to Marilyn Monroe, is catchy enough to be a hit if any radio station is brave enough to play it (BBC6 Music, this is your chance).

Fool For Love is a classic late-Roxy song, artful and artless at the same time. It turns out to be based on the track that precedes it, Ja Nun Hons Pris, written by Richard the Lionheart. Sung here by a visiting soprano, it is beautiful, strange and undoubtedly the greatest 11th Century ballad you will hear this year.

Best of all is the Eno track, I Thought. Typically it is not typical of their previous collaborations but is more like Eno's early solo stuff - warm, cheering, clever pop, with a ska-like rhythm and a radiant melody.

When their voices, so unalike in every way, come together on the chorus, they sound like long-lost soul mates, and there is a poignancy such as you can probably achieve only by spending 20 years not talking to each other. They really should make an album together.

Last Updated: 19 July 2008