Bryan Ferry “Bête Noire”
Can something be too cool? Hard to say. Can something be too refined? Absolutely. When you whittle and whittle endlessly, eventually the original concept gets lost and the iterative changes become less breathtaking.
Bryan Ferry is nothing, if not refined. His style - the tuxedoed, mid-century, playboy, lounge singer to billionaires and their gorgeous, disaffected wives - has been a fifty year art project. It’s meticulous in most every way and completely practiced. But this is not the man he was born to be. Bryan Ferry grew up very modestly. But he willed his way to art school, where he discovered collage, semiotics, Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground. By 1970, he developed a fully realized art concept -- from sound to image. And that concept was called Roxy Music.
The space between early Roxy Music -- high concept and experimental -- and later 80s Bryan Ferry may seem like a great distance. But there was never a broad leap or pivot along the way. Some may point to Brian Eno’s early departure but even that seems like a small speed bump in Ferry’s process of continuous refinement and whittling. He just worked the image. Upgraded the fit of his jackets. Brushed his hair one hundred times each night. Added new pigments. Trained his vocal muscle. Considered women. Considered his character. And made music.
Across eight Roxy Music albums and seven solo albums between 1972 and 1985, Bryan Ferry emerges as the most refined man in music. He almost single-handedly invents a strain of New Wave dubbed “Romantic” and perfects a mid and down-tempo, artsy soul music that is defined by tasteful musicianship, subtle beats and an indescribable longing. Bryan Ferry presages everything from Sade to The National. And he was so good, for so long, that we often take his music for granted. In 2020, the notion of Bryan Ferry is as much a cover photo in Italian Vogue or a picture of he and Jerry Hall in a hip Instagram feed as much as anything else.
And this iconic image and notion that has ascended at the very expense of his great music is a result of all that whittling.
In 1987, Bryan Ferry released “Bête Noire,” his seventh studio album and the follow-up to the highly successful “Boys and Girls.” By this point, Ferry had established his romantic, post-Avalon sound -- the insinuating synths, the down beats, the clipped croon and the consequences of love and pleasure. When we first heard it, it sounded both familiar and like a breakthrough. Five years later, the sound had been commoditized through movie soundtracks and softcore cable porn. For Ferry to remain vital he had two options -- write amazing songs and / or try something new.
On “Bête Noire,” he fails at the former and almost succeeds at the latter. You could always count on Bryan Ferry for at least two iconic singles per album. Looking back on his career, it’s astonishing how consistent he was at this feat. From “the exhilarating Virginia Plain” and “If There is Something” on Roxy Music’s debut to “Slave to Love” and “Don’t Stop the Dance” on “Boys and Girls,” Bryan Ferry always mixed big hits into his big ideas.
But on “Bête Noire,” it seems that Ferry’s big, new idea is to whittle the sound more and more. He apparently upgraded from a fifty six track board to a sixty four track board and used every track. He collaborated with Patrick Leonard, who had extraordinary success producing Madonna, and he co-wrote the single, “The Right Stuff” with Johnny Marr. The album places much more emphasis on the beats and much less on the lead vocals. The result is a stylish version of Talking Heads’ “Fear of Music” where the paranoia is replaced with middle-aged foreplay.
Because Bryan Ferry’s deep, controlled croon is so wonderful and because his taste is so refined, all is not lost. “New Town” is a slow, haunting search for answers with just clues for lyrics. David Gilmour adds some guitar flourish to inject some heat into all the yearning. “Zamba” is three minutes of hushed, dreamy desire with nine short lines of lyrics. It ends before everything can break.
The aforementioned “Kiss and Tell” is a light and polite single. In retrospect, it sounds like fan service and an exploration of the venn diagram of Roxy Music and The Smiths. Turns out there’s a lot of overlap, but it’s the least interesting stuff from both sound shapes. The opener, “Limbo” is the Talking Heads’ “I Zimbra” for the private island set’s 5pm cocktail hour. It’s semi-funky, white person world music with Bryan Ferry painting on top.
To be clear, everything on the album sounds really good. The playing is great. The rhythms are interesting and the pairing of Ferry’s more constrained, lovelorn lead vocals with the backing vocals gospel passion is a good trick. But, by 1987, Bryan Ferry’s collage got so confusing that it all begins to get muddled. Was Bryan Ferry the originator or the co-opter? Was “Bete Noire” a step forward in sound or a step backward in focus? Was this tasteful or just boring?
Very few artists get to whittle as long or as successfully as Bryan Ferry did. Personally, I was interested in every step of the process, including and through “Bete Noire.” But, it seems that, by 1987, he had whittled it all down to a toothpick. He wouldn’t make another solo album after “Bete Noire” for another five years.