Anticipate Bryan Ferry's "Olympia"

Track listing:

1. You Can Dance
2. Alphaville
3. Heartache By Numbers (co-written with Scissor Sisters)
4. Me Oh My
5. Shameless (A new version of the song co-written with and preveiously released by Groove Armada)
6. Song To The Siren (Tim Buckley Cover)
7. No Face, No Name, No Number (Traffic cover)
8. BF Bass (Ode To Olympia)
9. Reason Or Rhyme
10. Tender Is The Night

Non-Groove Armada version of "You Can Dance" (note the "True to Life" sample):

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

Love the 'True to Life' sample, not liking the soaring guitars at all (I'm listening on shitty computer speakers though). I prefer the DJ Hell collab-version (what's the groove armada version?). I recall reading that Eno's involved as well, true?

Manzanera, McKay, and Eno are all involved. It looks like one of those star-studded affairs again, with six hundred ace sessioneers per song. As fond as I am of Frantic, I have little excitement for this.

Love Bryan with all my heart, but Song to The Siren? Really? Why??

I have rarely been less in the mood for Ferry's whole glamor/decadence thing. Musically, nothing is pulling me in here.

As fond as I am of Frantic, I have little excitement for this.

Too true.

I've been feeling Roxy Music lately, and I've always loved Ferry's 80s albums - this track sounds like he's revisiting that vibe.

I think this is what resulted from the "roxy reforming for new album" sessions two years ago which were recently denied as untrue. not sure why it didn't turn into a full roxy record.

the implication seems like "Cuz Bryan said no at the last minute."

man I am very stoked for this, you guys who don't trust BF can no longer be my bf's

oh, the mamounity

You're talking to the most exhaustive conversationalist on the many charms of his late eighties and early nineties output. It's best to approach him these days with lowered expectations and wind up surprising yourself – that's how Frantic worked, which is why I'm not as grossed out by the Buckley cover. He works best mixing originals and covers anyway.

i'm going the other way. working myself up into a lather until forced to do otherwise.

frantic did sneak up on me tho

haha -- that's what I did with Dylanesque ('This is gonna RULE! He's so good at covering Dylan!").

I am pretending Dylanesque didn't happen

We have cover art:

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/blogs/2010/09/olympia.jpg

And more PR hash:

BRYAN FERRY ON THE OLYMPIA COVER ART:

“It's been quite a while since I put out an album featuring my own compositions, and Olympia is just that. It's taken a long time, and a lot of great musicians, old and new, contributed their talents to make it what it is, so naturally it's a very important record for me. Some people have already mentioned that Olympia sounds more like a Roxy Music album than any of my previous solo records, and this is probably true.

I approached the record with the same intensity as the early Roxy Music albums, and I wanted the artwork to represent this. One of the inspirations for the cover was the 19th century painting 'Olympia' by Edouard Manet – a kind of early pin-up picture, and in a sense a forerunner of some 20th Century Pop Art, which I feel strongly connected to.

The picture shows a young courtesan lying on a bed, receiving flowers from her maid, which are no doubt a gift from her lover. She wears very little more than a provocative expression, and the painting created quite an uproar when it was first exhibited in Paris. There's an interesting essay on this, written by Michael Bracewell, which is featured in the 40 page 'deluxe' version of the album.

I wanted a cover-girl for this record who could convey the glamorous notoriety of the original Olympia painting, and the obvious choice was Kate Moss. Kate has long been the 'femme fatale' of our age, as controversial as she is beautiful, and the most glamorous female icon since Marilyn Monroe.

I was still finishing my album at the time of the photoshoot, so everything happened at the last minute (which is often the way with 'rock 'n roll). The shoot took place at Sunbeam Studios in London, and the designer Gideon Ponte built a fantastic set – with the finest linen...the perfect bed...Shoes and dresses were flown-in from Paris, jewellery escorted by security guards, flowers everywhere, a supporting cast of thousands... and everyone involved worked really hard to get the right shot, especially our photographer Adam Whitehead.”

PHOTOGRAPHER ADAM WHITEHEAD ON THE KATE MOSS PHOTOSHOOT:

"When Bryan approached me to shoot his new album cover I jumped at the chance, envisaging all his famous covers of the past. On the day Kate was amazing. She had in her mind exactly the character she wanted to portray 'Give me red lips, I want to be a Roxy girl' she screamed!"

ABOUT OLYMPIA:

The legendary Bryan Ferry returns with his brand new studio album Olympia on October 26, his debut for EMI’s Astralwerks Records. The album features musical contributions from Nile Rodgers, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Groove Armada, Scissor Sisters, Marcus Miller, Flea, ex Stone Roses Mani (Primal Scream) and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. It also sees Bryan Ferry reunite on record with members of Roxy Music, including Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Andy Mackay. In a review of Olympia’s lead single “You Can Dance,” Rolling Stone wrote “the layered guitars and Ferry’s suave croon make for an elegant celebration of sexual tension.”

Why does reading this post make me feel like I'm being transferred to hospice care?

I'm surprised Ferry can still "spare no expense" to shoot boring cover sheets.

Ugh. Flea?

Co-written with the Scissor Sisters. The usual Ferry piano chords are reassuring, I guess.

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

Song to the Siren alone features guitars from Dave Gilmour, Nile Rodgers, Phil Manzanera and Jonny Greenwood AND keyboards from Brian Eno. This album is remarkably well-staffed even by Ferry's standards.

He's got a remarkable talent for hiring a cast of thousands and getting them to sound exactly the same.

Interview and all:

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2010/10/tte-tte-bryan-ferry.html

Amazing how much everyone is pissing all over this before even hearing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB7WkJk2NGw

kind of loving the song, and weirdly hypnotized by the extreme wrongness of that video - the fire effects are like something off an old Geocities page

This actually isn't bad.

Out on Tuesday. Another leak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcV6XpahfRU

I don't mind this. Very prominent Ferry keyboards too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-qVmik8PqE

Just gave the whole thing a listen -- very good on first blush, if not quite as enjoyably surprising a shift as Frantic it makes me think of Mamouna if it were a lot less one note: more variety in the arrangements, good sequencing. Not bad almost forty years on from that monumental debut.

I'm buying it tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZbJsQaXHA0

dude's always had a thing for a cover, but releasing a cover of his own last single as the lead single off his new album is sub-Primal Scream in this instance

ferry 4 life

Listening to this now. The last Ferry album I heard was Bête Noire; it doesn't seem like I've missed much in the intervening decade and a half. I do kind of admire his Sade-like ability to sound like he records from a hyperbaric chamber.

Nothing's changed.

I mean, the man has a song called "Heartache By Numbers."

Oh, I dunno. "Frantic" has its more memorable moments (plus, Eno and Paul Thompson, and Jonny Greenwood), incl. the Omnichordific "Wrong Way Up"-sorta "I Thought," which he co-wrote with Eno.

I always find it amusing that just about every Ferry album features two or three Roxy guys, but never the entire core (more or less) of McKay/Manzanera/Thompson/Eno, and rarely all at once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WpMuEcD4iU

This is surely Ferry in more than just his usual smooth operator mode.

No, I love Frantic, as I've said elsewhere, but it's not much different conceptually from Mamouna and Bete Noir. Besides, he can always assemble an album of rotten Dylan covers after his previous album boasted one of his best-ever.

Yeah, how come some of his Dylan covers are awesome and some are lame? Does he not recognize the peaks from the valleys?

He doesn't give a damn. For all his insularity he's one of the least introspective major rock figures still recording; he doesn't think about the wheres and whys.

Tom Ewing's review.

"Startlingly compelling" - pretty much the last phrase I would use to describe this record! My review from last month: http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/bryan_ferry/reviews/14440

christ, why does Ferry still think slap bass is hot?

Perhaps it reminds me of the last time he had sex before he entered the hyperbaric chamber.

Reminds YOU?

Hahahah. His love was indeed strong enough.

this album is a disappointment, what a cobbled together, slapdash mess.

In Every Dream Home a Raggett

I like much of what I've heard so far -- probably half of it, which is pretty good going at this point. As I've probably said elsewhere on this board, Ferry's voice, to my ears, has been noticeably stronger since As Time Goes By, and he's still doing some interesting things vocally here (hard to be more specific as I've only listened to the thing twice, I'm just talking about his overall approach these days as a vocalist, which I personally hear as almost a rebuke to the '80s Ferry). The musical direction, on the other hand, clearly harkens back to the '80s Ferry, and it works fine for me (somewhat surprisingly TBH, though yeah, big ugh to the mercifully infrequent Seinfeld bass moves.)

My one complaint thus far is probably an obvious one (and note that I've only listened to it twice all the way through): the album gets by way more on mood than on melody. Melodically speaking, it feels kind of blank to me. Which, again, is fine. I like the feel of the album, I just can't imagine caring much about it in the long run. In that way it's like the recent Dylan records for me. They're good for a few weeks. I never pull them off the shelf and listen to them again afterwards. If I hear a song somewhere, it's fine. Not remotely essential, though.

This apparently is a lyric:

"Your taste is bittersweet
And your Facebook is your home

Get off the computer, grandad!

Wherever you lay your cape, that's your home

Anyone else? I've come around to "Heartache by Numbers" and "You Can Dance."

I like this album, all the way through. I'm sure glad it's not a Roxy Music album, but it's a fine BF album. It's as good as 'Frantic,' if you ask me. I like every song, even the one with the slap bass. People who say that his 'Song To The Siren' is better than This Mortal Coil's are crazy, though.

I don't like the cover at all.

The Quietus interview:

http://thequietus.com/articles/05305-bryan-ferry-roxy-music-interview

I’m taking this in and regrouping when Bryan Ferry says, “I was once in a hotel elevator with Chuck Berry. It was weird because he was so unfriendly. Maybe he was embarrassed because he had this McDonalds brown paper bag; he’d been out to get a hamburger to take back to his room.” (In truth, Mr. Ferry says “McDonald”, not “McDonalds”. I doubt he’s overly familiar with the concept.) “I thought it was rather sad. I was just coming in from a Radio City Music Hall show I’d played in New York, with a towel over my head. And there he was. And we had to go up about twenty floors. So I tried to make conversation, but it was a bit hard. He was hugging his Big Mac and I think was embarrassed that I’d recognised him.

That wasn't a Big Mac. It was his infamous bag of gig cash, and he was no doubt worried Ferry would steal it.

Nice review, Stevie T (even though I don't agree)

Bugfuck madman movie critic Armond White branches into music criticism, reviews Olympia for the NY Press.

probably a bag of poo for his glass coffee table

Not bad!

Yeah, not bad at all, just occasionally weird:

On “You Can Dance” Ferry observes life through the symbol of what Grace Jones called “nightclubbing”

Thanks for explaining that obscure term, Armond.

Not an Armond defender by any means, but to me it sounds like an editorial imposition.

Love the Quietus interview. This is probably my favorite part:

A few years ago he asked me to write his tour programme. After I’d emailed it over, he phoned up and said he’d sent a car for me. When I got to Olympia he asked if it would be OK to remove a comma. I said, “Sure.” The car then brought me home again.

i'd like to think it was this car

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NDpJQZYRMD8/SzgEC7x2kSI/AAAAAAAABck/f9TKcBNSIcw/s1600/pleasure%2Bback.jpeg

"When I got to Olympia he asked if it would be OK to remove a comma."

he did write a song called "the space between"

lol

What's marvelous about the album is how closely perceptions match reality.

I'm taken with "Heartache By Numbers" these days. "Rhyme or Reason" too.

Listening to it right now - probably not an essential addition to his work but, compared to the trash we have to listen when we're at work, Olympia sounds utterly fantastic.

I was going to revive this to mention his upcoming US tour. I bought tickets for the Miami show, his first since 1995.

And, yes, the album is solid ("Reason or Rhyme" and "Heartache by Numbers" remain favorites), but I still prefer Frantic.

Grrr, have a conflict and have to miss the W. DC area gig

You're busy in October?

Yep. Family obligation that night

Bryan Ferry likes wine.

"I'd like to start with a glass of Pouilly-Fumé," said Mr. Ferry, putting the list down. Marcel's wine director, Ramón Narváez, was standing nearby and promptly produced a rock-star-worthy magnum of 2007 "Silex" Pouilly-Fumé ($470 list price) from the late, great Loire Valley producer Didier Dagueneau. Silex is a wonderfully complex, gorgeously transparent wine—one of the greatest Sauvignon Blancs in the world. (I had a glass of the 2010 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé—a very nice though not exactly rock-star rosé.)

"I hate that," Mr. Ferry said, gesturing at the bottle of Pouilly-Fumé when it arrived. "You hate the wine?" I replied disbelievingly. "No, the label," he said. He did have a point. The label featured a rather ugly brown rock. (Silex is the type of soil found in the Dagueneau vineyards.) "It is kind of ugly," I admitted. "But the wine is so good."

"I can't drink a wine if it has an ugly label," said Mr. Ferry, who studied art before he founded Roxy Music in 1970 with Brian Eno. Mr. Ferry possesses a prodigious art collection including works by Lucian Freud. His album covers are often just as striking as the music inside. His most recent album, last year's "Olympia," featured a glamorous and sultry Kate Moss sprawled, perfume-ad-style, on the cover. (Mr. Ferry was artistic director of the cover; Ms. Moss is a close friend of his.)

"I can't drink a wine if it has an ugly label," said Mr. Ferry

Tim Cook needs to get on the phone with this guy. "Yeah, we're looking for a visionary art/design-obsessed replacement figure here..."

BTW, his recent tour stop here was the snooze. And not in a good way. I had really fond memories of his '94 trek, and was generally let down. Also, mysteriously, one of his guitarists disappeared during the intermission and never came back! Oh, and there was an intermission!

I didn't mind the intermission – lots of acts are doing it these days. But, yeah, I thought the Miami show uneven at best.

After seeing Paul McCartney go nearly three hours without an intermission, outdoors on a 95 and humid day, it seemed pretty lame for Ferry to do it. It's not like the guy was working up a lather, you know?

Ah, the scoop re: the missing guitarist: "he cut a finger badly backstage during intermission and had to go to the hospital and have 12 stitches." Odd that there was no mention. Losing a guitarist mid-set certainly didn't help things. At least we got Paul Thompson on drums rather than Ferry's son, though I would have preferred Andy Newmark.

I like the idea of a languid front man who doesn't take his job so seriously. Sir Paul on the other hand wants the love of the crowd so badly that he wouldn't mind if every member throttled him.

I love the idea of a languid frontman as well. But the intermission took the steam out of a show that was already leaking air, and again, I've seen Ferry a couple of times before, and he owned it.

Part of the problem comes from larding up the set with soporific "Avalon" stuff, which the fans love and Ferry needs to play, but which drags everything down with it. I'd rather hear "Kiss and Tell" any day over anything from "Avalon."

Good point. During my show he played "Don't Stop the Dance" and "Kiss and Tell" back to back.

Finally listening to this on Spotify. Despite the fact that it doesn't seem to do a lot, I find myself listening to "You Can Dance" over and over and"Heartache By Numbers" is pretty terrific. That said, his voice sounds but a wisp of what it used to be. I'm a bit surprised there isn't more commentary on that both on this thread and in the press.

Also, it occurred to me today that for the last few decades, Ferry has sort of always been exactly where pop culture isn't w respect to his own legacy. Like, as people were rediscovering the first five Roxy records, he was still doing the clipped funk Taxi and Mamouna. By the time he finally caught up w Frantic, Avalon was being rediscovered. In some ways the guy is just destined to be out of his time.

That said, his voice sounds but a wisp of what it used to be.

My review of a September '11 show

Ah yes. I remember that piece. Agree totally. Do you have one on how every record he releases is some cobbling together of a failed grand vision? Horoscope --> Mamouna/Alphaville --> Frantic/Roxy reunion --> Olympia.

Listening back thru his 90s records, I often wonder what Eno thinks of his contributions -- they are, uh, a bit hard to detect in the soupy mix of ROMplers and atmospherics.

Well, for sure DX7-era Eno is pretty much implicit in Ferry's post-Avalon solo sound, whether he's there or not. Everything's sort of recorded through a similar digital haze. In fact, I was always impressed how easily Roxy replicated Eno's sonic anarchy on "Stranded" and "Country Life." At this point Eno's more or less a pre-set.

I'm talking less about his influence than his specific contributions. On Mamouna it's virtually impossible to hear what he's doing as opposed to one of the 72 other session cats. If anything, those cuts could have benefited from less atmosphere and more grit/sonic anarchy.

"You Can Dance" sounds, er, frantic, but frantic in the way that a man would think after his mousse dries.

xpost Unless he's singing, it's often hard to tell what Eno is doing, exactly, with Ferry or anyone. Especially when he's credited with stuff like "Enossification" or whatever. Often times he's literally just contributing ideas.

Really? I think it depends on the record. Like, on the John Cale song "Caribbean Sunset," you can hear how Eno fiddled with the bouncy bass sound. Also, on "I Thought" on Frantic, he's clearly responsible for the omnichord or whatever.

I just assumed it was treatments that got buried under the other, uh, treatments -- I hadn't heard about the ideas part. Like what?

Like when he implores James to "play like you're in Iceland" or whatever. Or any other oblique strategery. I'm not sure what he contributed, sonically, to "Once in a Lifetime," aside from his vox, but he gets the co-write for coming up with the call-and-response chorus. Or, famously, the murky mix of the intro to "Where the Streets Have No Name," which was reportedly much his doing, even if he's not really playing anything or even "producing," per se.

"I Thought" is a co-write, and he also sings, so perhaps that explains why his contribution is more apparent. He does gravitate toward the Omnichord a lot, and it shows up a lot on songs he's worked on, but it's sort of an automatic instrument whose player is irrelevant. The point I was making is that there are lots of weird sounding records with Eno on them, but there's no way to know if said weirdness is his doing. Like Bowie's Berlin trilogy, produced by Tony Visconti, who was responsible for the treated drums sounds, for example, not Eno.

This one has steadily grown on me, especially the first four tracks.

I agree. Initially disliked this a lot, now think it's fine.

Terrific performance of my favorite song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqDg6HZsIfs

Between this, the Low vs. AGW thread, and the Outside poll, there are about four or five different threads going on right now that are all proxies for a half dozen people's take on latter-day Eno...