Loose Talk (LP)

Loose Talk signals the beginning of a new creative chapter for Bryan Ferry, blurring the lines between music, poetry and art. Fifty-three years since Roxy Music's iconic debut album arrived like a bolt-from-the-blue, his latest project is just as startlingly unexpected. The sounds and shapes, and the spoken words they are set to, are unlike any previous Bryan Ferry album. At the same time, the mood that Loose Talk captures is rooted in Ferry's past half-century of work.

The album is a collaboration with visual artist and writer Amelia Barratt after they met at a gallery opening. She provides texts and narration, in a cool, unemotional RP voice, with the instrumental backings based on unreleased demo recordings from throughout Ferry's career, with the earliest examples dating from the early 70s. These demos were then refined and reworked in the studio, with some fresh contributions from musicians including Roxy drummer Paul Thompson.

There are certainly points where Ferry's contributions fade into the realm of the characterless - Demolition or Florist could be the work of anyone - but Loose Talk is liberally studded with genuinely haunting moments, frequently when the old demos yield a snatch of vocal, as on Landscape or Cowboy Hat. Ferry's melodies are beautiful, the fact that these vocals are either wordless place-filler or rendered incomprehensible by the lo-fi sound gives them a strange quality, like memories you struggle to recall in detail.

The album at times brings to mind the work of fellow Londoners Dry Cleaning, with Amelia's English accent and similar flat, spoken vocal deliver of her obscure poems over Ferry's lo-fi backing tracks creating a surreal, chamber pop alternative to Dry Cleaning's post-punk drive.