Album Review: Bryan Ferry - Avonmore

Just to update: Roxy Music are officially no more. Mr Ferry, lead singer thereof for 40-odd years, had a slight sidetrack into jazzy stylings centred around contributions to our Baz’s Great Gatsby movie, where the old lounge lizard’s lugubrious tones fitted well. So, for his first full album under his own name for going on five years, what’s on offer? Well, pretty much same as ever.

Loop De Li pretty much sets the tone. Tasteful guitar, even some ‘80s-style sax, off in the distance while Bryan muses on love glimpsed through gauzy curtains.

Ferry and longtime producer/collaborator Rhett Davies know their template and do get a quality cast aboard to add the niceties. There are no less than nine guitarists variously involved, notably Nile Rodgers, whose trademark rhythms centre the disco shuffle of Driving Me Wild, while Johnny Marr carefully picks through the more wistful Soldier Of Fortune, which he also co-wrote. Mark Knopfler’s tone is similarly immediately identifiable.

Album closes with a couple of idiosyncratic covers: the previously sighted Todd Terje collaboration of a considered reading of Robert Palmer’s Johnny & Mary – a song once so full of such nervous energy – as well as Sondheim’s much loved/much loathed Send In The Clowns, where Ferry’s increasingly sand-blasted tones underscore the observed melancholy of it. Basically, Avonmore boils down to dinner-party music polished to a lovely sheen, from an artist in a comfort zone that’s served him well. It’s probably down to your personal preference if that’s enough.