Bryan Ferry -- Avonmore

I find "Soldier of Fortune" to be nice change of pace on this record. "Midnight Train," OTOH, had been kicking around since Horoscope in the early- to mid-90s (featuring no less than NINE guitarists) for no apparent reason.

Truth be told, "Lost" may be my secret favorite on this album – and Ferry is listed as the sole keyboardist on that one. So your theory may not be wrong.

My jams are the title track, "Driving Me Wild" (on which he plays piano and chintzy organ), "Lost," and "One Night Stand." Oh - "Loop de Li" too. So that's almost half the album.

I don't think all the guitarists are indulgent in the way people think. Over the years Ferry enlists different combinations of players to tackle different songs slightly different ways, and in the end he cobbles together the various sessions into one final product. I think that's what takes him so long, not the tracking but the editing and reconfiguration. Like, I bet folks like Marr and Nile are rarely ever in the same room together, let alone the three (!) bassists on the title track. The irony is that the results are often so more or less similarly smooth, as opposed to, say, Eno's results with the same approach he pioneered. As early as "Warm Jets" Eno would take multiple stabs at the same song with different bands, and then pick and choose what makes it to the end, with gleefully chaotic results, like "Needles in the Camel's Eye," which are pretty clearly two bands playing the same song at once.

I think that's what takes him so long, not the tracking but the editing and reconfiguration

oh he's admitted this

See also: Peter Gabriel.

Nine Horses' (D. Sylvian, S. Jansen, B. Friedman) 'Snow Borne Sorrow' is the best '00s album Bryan Ferry never made.

a jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7UB_0AiLNU

Elegant video, but it's the worst song on his worst album. I was so shocked when I first heard it that I imagined that if someone told me this was a parody, I'd think "how cruel, he'd never write a song this terrible!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQxEYigj9eA

6:45

Elegant video, but it's the worst song on his worst album. I was so shocked when I first heard it that I imagined that if someone told me this was a parody, I'd think "how cruel, he'd never write a song this terrible!"

― Halfway there but for you,

Nah. It can't be the worst when "Soldier of Fortune" or "Midnight Train" exist.

Was this really released seven years ago? 😳

All this time on, the record sounds like what it is: a grab bag of leftovers from the Horoscope and Alphaville sessions, with a few new-ish things mixed on a 256-track Neve desk in his studio castle. Part of me wonders whether Alfred's dislike of "Soldier of Fortune" is that it is Ferry over a guitar a la Dylanesque, one of his least favorite--and most guitar-based--records. "Lost" remains pretty good. "Driving Me Wild" sounds like Dave Stewart may have had a hand in it (tho the credits don't reflect that). The title track is peak late-period Ferry, tho -- and while I'm less enamored with the dying-old-man "Johnny and Mary" and "Send In the Clowns" covers than others, I do enjoy them. The Mamouna retread twenty years on that no one was asking for.

"Loop De Li" is a fun single too.

"Loop De Li" is good, the title track is almost good, the covers are adequately sung but conceptually corny, the rest is weak to terrible.

"Johnny and Mary" is conceptually brilliant.

"Loop De Li" is a fun single too.

Agreed, tho the version on Horoscope ("Your Love Has Died") is superior, largely bc of the comparative power of his vocal (Mamouna probably features his best late-period vocals -- you can hear a little smoke sneak in on Frantic). There are even a few achy "More Than This"-y moments which were stricken from the record around 1997. It's also mixed more skeletally, as was his wont in the early-90s.

Not sure if Trower was involved by that point, but both the voice and mix are superior on the Horoscope "Midnight Train," too -- which still isn't one of his stronger compositions but suits Ferry's urban funk era much better a la "NYC" than the heavy beated return to it two decades later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9JW-NsXzPM

I have no idea what led Ferry to Trower or even about Trower's sideline as producer, but he was the best collaborator outside of Eno that Ferry could've asked for.

"Johnny and Mary" is conceptually brilliant.

I don't think it works as a dirge, all the pathos in Robert Palmer's version comes from the contrast of the downbeat words and the sprightly tempo.

I think it's ... fine as a dirge? But yeah -- I think the Ferry version is both more sophisticated but also less complex, if that makes sense.

I have no idea what led Ferry to Trower or even about Trower's sideline as producer, but he was the best collaborator outside of Eno that Ferry could've asked for.

Yeah, me neither. But Taxi was the first Ferry solo record I bought -- I picked it up when it came out. And even then, I was struck by how it was his simultaneously his Lothario Smoothie persona that shot him to superstardom as well as kind of weird, distant and not particularly commercial. It's still one of my favorites of his.

yall hear this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U32k9zabDjE