Bryan Ferry

After Roxy Music called it a day with Avalon, Ferry returned to a solo career with this quintessentially 1980s album. The first half is suave New Wave make-out music (including the hit "Slave to Love"), while the second half is darker and heavier on guitars. This hasn't dated as well as Ferry's earlier work, but with the '80s revival in full swing this could still be the sound of tomorrow.

When Bryan Ferry first began making solo records in 1973, his apparent goal was to forge a
path radically different from what he was writing and performing with Roxy Music. So while
the group produced utterly original, unconventional music, Ferry perversely made albums
of songs by other artists, from Dylan to the Beatles to Motown, singing them as if he'd never
heard them before. Ferry eventually dropped the gimmick (though Roxy surprisi... More >

Sure "Make believing is the real thing." When Ferry is grooving, though, the emphasis is on the make-believe, not the real. Here there's heavy slippage, especially on side one. His voice thicker and more mucous, his tempos dragging despite all the fancy beats he's bought, he runs an ever steeper risk of turning into the romantic obsessive he's always played so zealously. (Grade - B-)