new introductory bit here.

This is a reviews page based on my own collection, which just keeps growing despite itself. If it isn't listed here, it's because I don't own it yet, or I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Also, bother your local "new rock" radio station and make sure they are playing "new rock" and not "Rock the Casbah," which is not new.

note: entries in red text indicate my pick for the artist's best available album. A gold numeral indicates the POPocalypse winner of the year's best album; second- and third-place winners are in blue. Green lettering indicates an obviously exploitative record company compilation without apparent artist input. Purple lettering indicates something nobody legally got paid for.

Newcastle singer Bryan Ferry had become a major British celebrity with the release of the first Roxy Music album in 1972, and took advantage of that band's initial recording break to start his own career. His first two solo albums are covers records, ideas that are fairly common now but were surprising decisions for their day. They are alternately irreverent and earnest affairs, but both became huge hits. Things contains histrionically silly, blasphemous versions of "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and "Sympathy for the Devil." There's even a remarkably goofy take of "It's My Party." Eye-opening and wonderful. There's nothing on Place as outrageous or iconoclastic as on his first album, but his "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," a subtle and seductive effort that might have killed lesser men's reputations, is stunning, and "Help Me Make it Through the Night" is better than the original. The album sports the first appearance of Ferry's white tux, an image he'd use off and on for the next eight years.

A 1976 compilation of Bry's most recent covers, issued in England on singles and EPs, as well as solo versions of classic Roxy tracks, Let's Stick Together was first available in England as an import, and consequently charted low. These are done in a smoother, less abrasive style than the originals and fit the proceedings a little better. This would have flowed better with one set of musicians, though. It features four separate guitarists and bassists, but if you approach it as a compilation, it might wear better.

With Roxy split, Bry attempted solo stardom in America, but his fourth album is the weak link in his career. Well written, but sung and played badly, it hides behind one of the worst sleeves in pop music. The standout is the title cut, which is quite good. Lesser tracks include the single "This is Tomorrow" and the embarassingly dated "Tokyo Joe." Depressed by its American failure, Ferry retired to California and worked with a lot of laid-back sessioners trying to be the Eagles. When he resurfaced, having split with his longtime girlfriend Jerry Hall, he found that his commercial appeal had been totally eclipsed by the punks. This moody and introspective set, which preludes future lyrical concerns, was a worldwide disappointment and forced him back to Roxy for better things. The ten tracks of Bride, edited down from about 18 recorded for a planned double set, include both covers and originals, such as the minor hit "Sign of the Times" and the chart failures "Carrickfergus" (a traditional tune) and Lou Reed's "What Goes On."

After seven years and three further albums with Roxy Music, Ferry resumed his solo career with a darker exploration of themes originated on Roxy's Avalon. Beautifully played, moody, and with dense, multi-layered production, Boys and Girls is a real treasure, and one of the highlights of the 1980s. "A Waste Land" is the lyrical weak point, but otherwise it's full of some very strong writing, stark imagery and dark passion and contains the UK hits "Slave to Love" and "Don't Stop the Dance," which did some business on US radio. He held back too long to keep his chart momentum rolling, and 1987's Bete Noire was a comparative commercial failure, despite critical praise, excellent writing and production by Patrick Leonard. This magnificent effort, his last for six years, includes his only American top 40, "Kiss and Tell," which actually managed better numbers on the US charts than any of the singles did in England. The title track is seductive and disturbing, and the entire thing drips with dark imagery and many layers of multiple instruments. For several months, Ferry's US media profile was the highest it had been in a decade, but he failed to capitalize on it.

In 1989, Ferry began working on an album called Horoscope, but, four years later and facing creative inertia, he spent a few months recording covers with Robin Trower and released his eighth disc, Taxi. With all the material, including "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and "Just One Look," tuned to his current musical stylings, you wouldn't know it as a covers album unless you knew the songs already. A huge hit in England, it struggled to make the top 80 here. Energized by Taxi, Ferry reworked some of the Horoscope material. The end result, Mamouna, is great, but oddly lacking in energy. Most of the songs just drift by listlessly, with no hook or real power. "Wildcat Days" comes closest, but overall, this is a subtle album that requires more patience than most audiences are willing to give it.

As Time Goes By was the best album of the year... the year 1939, not 1999. Again suffering from writer's block, Bryan whipped up fifteen traditional 30s tunes, played with classical musicians and without any 90s tinkering in the studio. The result was compelling, assuming you like this era of music, but died a death in America without a hint of radio support (and truly, who do you expect to play stuff like a "Falling in Love Again" arranged just like Dietrich's version?). In Europe, the album charted modestly in most nations, but ended up a solid seller during a very long tour that saw Bry, more energized and upbeat than he had been five years before, tackling all phases of his career with renewed gusto.

Roxy Music reformed for a world tour in 2001. Energized, Ferry revisited his last set of abandoned sessions and recorded a few new songs. The resulting Frantic was released the following year. Featuring collaborations with and contributions from Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood, Dave Stewart, Brian Eno, Alison Goldfrapp and Lucy Kaplansky, along with more recent stalwarts Robin Trower and Colin Good, it really feels like an album assembled at a very slow pace over years and rushed at the finish, yet it works wonderfully despite its schizophrenic pulse. "San Simeon" revisits the Roxy classic "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" with a weird, haunting tone, while "Goddess of Love" is an upbeat love song to Marilyn Monroe. There are a pair of Dylan covers: "It's All Over Now Baby Blue," released as a single in Europe, and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," which Ferry and Colin Good performed in a memorable appearance on The Tonight Show that spring. Most magnificent of all is "I Thought," a collaboration with Eno with one of the most wistful lyrical odes to love gone wrong he's ever penned. The album led to another successful world tour. (10/02)

BRYAN FERRY & ROXY MUSIC: Street Life: 20 Great Hits (1986, UK #1, US #100, ***)
Good packaging and presentation, but all the photos were in color in the gatefold of the double LP and in black & white here, which is grating. The track listing is a little suspect: four tracks from Flesh + Blood, but none from Country Life?

BRYAN FERRY & ROXY MUSIC: The Ultimate Collection (1988, UK #6, ***)
Not the ultimate collection of his work (15 songs in random order), but more representative of his career than Street Life, at least including one song from Roxy's crucial Country Life. Further archive tracks were scattered as B-sides on the three singles that were pulled. Among the 15 songs are the 1986 US single "Help Me" (from The Fly soundtrack), a collaboration with Nile Rodgers, making its first UK appearance, and "He'll Have to Go," a 1978 recording unissued until now.

BRYAN FERRY: Slave to Love: The Best of the Ballads (2000, UK #11, ****)
A very listenable 18-track collection containing slower-paced solo and Roxy material. The order is random, but it's a good mix of singles and album tracks, with a B-side ("Crazy Love"), a rarity ("Sonnet No. 18") and a new song (the radio-promoted "This Love"). Nice packaging.

BRYAN FERRY: Songs from the Soul of My Suit ("July 7 1977," Sydney, Flat Records 1994)
This is a great recording of Bry and his band, touring In Your Mind in May 1977, performing a one-hour set live without an audience for Australian TV. I actually prefer this to the album, since the poor mix and backup vocals don't mar the performance. "Love Me Madly Again," for one, is definitely better than the LP version.