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Bryan Ferry - New Town Video Review

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Rolling Stone, 5th April 1990

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New Town, Bryan Ferry in Europe, Virgin Music Video

IT MAY SEEM ODD THAT EVERY other shot in New Town zooms in on the backup singers, but it shouldn't. After all, they're wearing the best outfits. Adorned with stalklike head-dresses, leafy wrist accessories and spiked heels, they often look like giant, fashion-conscious pineapples.

To Bryan Ferry, of course, looks like these are truly important. His music and persona have always centered on a kind of sonic haute couteure. Luckily, this eighty-eight-minute live program, which documents Ferry's 1988-89 European tour, is the best-tailored concert music of his career.

While Ferry's last two solo albums were too airbrushed in the production department, the material shows some grit in live performance. There may still be a strong sense of ambient mystery in songs like "Chosen One" or "Limbo," but the percussion of Steve Scales, the drumming of Andy Newmark and the guitar playing of Neil Hubbard and Jeff Thall are allowed more articulation onstage. In fact, Thall's guitar solo in "Ladytron" is so cutting and inspired it rivals the work of Phil Manzanera in Roxy Music's last concert video, The High Road.

Unfortunately, like The High Road, the cinematography in New Town proves a disappointment. Given the clotheshorse focus of the camera work, and the visual elan of the staging, it seems surprising that the photography is not more grand. Then again, at least Ferry himself proves as dapper as ever. Looking like a postmodern Dirk Bogarde, Ferry is as adept with older ironic pieces (like "Casanova") as he is with the new streamlined ones.

What's more, the guy can still dance a mean Strand.

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Text copyright 1990 Rolling Stone, used without permission.
With Thanks To Grant Goggans.