BRYAN FERRY - Olympia

As a child, Bryan Ferry dreamed of becoming an explorer, but also of emulating the nineteenth-century mountaineers (those velvet trousers, those clay pipes, reading verse, nights in little mountain tents...). But then he made a solemn decision: he would become a cyclist and try to win the Tour de France. The future dandy of all dandies, grappling with the supreme toils of the Tourmalet or the diabolical, relentless climb of Alpe d'Huez. And then, the parade down the Champs-Élysées and the coveted podium, gazing at the yellow jersey — what fabric, he'd wonder, stroking it — while the flashbulbs dazzled his celebrity and his vanity. Instead he became a singer, and in place of handlebars he decided to grip a microphone. In short, he shunned the hardship.

Not true at all: look closely, and the whole artistic journey of pop's handsome dark stranger has been a continuous series of ascents and descents along treacherous hairpin bends that only a champion's crystalline class has managed to tame, making it all look far too easy.

He hasn't been an out-and-out dominator, though: the Merckx-that-never-was has had to endure overtaking on all sides, the mockery of stylish-less young upstarts (ah, the punks!), and more than a few have tried to copy his gifts as a rouleur, the shrewd tactician who skewers you when you least expect it. But he just carries on regardless, impassive in the face of both praise and criticism, indifferent to advice and winks, refusing to fall in with the peloton. Always. Ferry has created one, ten, a thousand trends, only to toss them to the flatterers afterwards. Do what you like with them, he seems to say, I have my own finish line to reach. That of seduction. Whatever it takes. And so the tour sets off again... de force.

And so, after two decades spent under the radar, between minimal if not downright retro covers albums ("Taxi", "As Time Goes By" and the recent "Dylanesque") and unresolved bouts of acute perfectionism (the albums of original material "Mamouna" and "Frantic"), here he is emerging from a hairpin bend with an unexpected stride. We'd left him months ago in the studio with the rest of Roxy Music, Eno included, busy reviving a glorious name that had been gathering dust in the attic since 1982 (if we exclude the thrilling onstage appearances), and now we find him on his own, with much of the shelved reunion sessions in his pocket, a couple of covers of note, and the fruit of a 1995 collaboration with Dave Stewart (the never-released "Alphaville Sessions"), serving us, with his trademark aplomb, his first collection of new material since 2002.

That alone would already be news, but the really good news is something else: "Olympia" is the languid crooner's best work since "Boys And Girls". Bryan's solo career since the end of his golden decade (the Eighties) seems like an exact transposition of his stage moves: brazenly deliberate, composed beyond all measure, a record every seven or eight years (covers albums aside), in which every rendez-vous becomes the pretext for taking stock of a near-obsessive pursuit of formal perfection, most often folded into aristocratic highs and lows. Most of the time, that is. Because this time the surprise is a big one: it goes beyond the by-now customary lineup of world-class session men deployed, beyond our man's morphine-slow gait, bypassing the congenital intimism that is his permanent fixture and leitmotif.

"Olympia", with Kate Moss's big eyes winking from the cover, is a compendium of guitars applied to soft-rock, of rhythm sections that are substantial yet ethereal, the triumph of the recording studio used as the principal instrument, a seal on Eno's own gospel according to which the studio is, in itself, the expression of a new art form. What lies ahead of us is not the "usual" quest for some unprecedented yet generic electronic sound, but the patient chiselling of a thousand instrumental fragments — mostly traditional ones — taken apart and reduced to single tiles that reassemble into the mosaic of the songs. And what songs. Take Bryan, just self-referential enough, who in "You Can Dance" (two versions already known, the drum'n'bass one from the little-known "Alphaville Sessions" and the hypertechno one lent to Dj Hell last year) forges a murky guitar stampede starting from a sample of the Roxy-era "True To Life", drawing on the simultaneous services of three guitarists (Nile Rodgers above all) and a trio of bassists of the calibre of Marcus Miller (a Miles Davis loyalist), Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Gary "Mani" Mounfield (Stone Roses): it's sheer madness. And what to say of "Alphaville", where the guitarists climb to five (!) with the arrival of Dave Stewart and the veteran session man behind "Slave To Love", Neil Hubbard, drawing the most nocturnal and surreal of funk grooves, with the blessing of Brian Eno's rarefied flanger synth?

Ferry's voice today is wrapped in a patina bestowed by time, which has darkened and enriched it, the way it happens to fine wood. "Heartache By Numbers", the fruit of a collaboration with Jake Shears and Babydaddy of Scissor Sisters, with Andy Mackay's oboe and Miller's sugar-coated slap bass setting up a "choral" passage that sounds like a glossy version of Arcade Fire, and "Me Oh My", pure and slow melancholy marked out by the unmistakable calembour of David Gilmour (him too), which revives the glories of the sadly underrated Roxy-esque "Flesh And Blood". And then there's the nervy, dreamlike uptempo of "Shameless", a disguised reworking of a soft dance version that had already appeared on "Black Light", the album Groove Armada had just released.

Then comes a moment when Ferry needs to unwind, to open the album of memories, with the turntable needle sliding over the notes of remembrance. Legs crossed, a good brandy warming the atmosphere. It's always been this way: today it's the turn of the touching "Song To The Siren" by Tim Buckley and "No Face, No Name, No Number", subdued and dramatic in their original form, but plastic, elegant and sensual after the Ferry treatment. And while the version of the song written by Jeff's father comes out a bit didactic, though never vulgar (heaven forbid...), the epic of Winwood and co. is rejuvenated: faithful to the score, yet it loses its nostalgic edge, trading folk for rhythm, breaking free serenely before being caught up in the trademark inflections of the Newcastle crooner. It's a dance for two, under a starry sky, in a chiaroscuro ballroom, with the flourishes of Chris Spedding (not by chance the recent alter ego of Phil Manzanera in Roxy's live shows) beckoning, beckoning...

But then, suddenly, the funky bass of Marcus Miller's "Tutu", a fiery rhythm, reined in with a necktie by our man, whispering while She screams, writhes, yields. And the star realizes it's the right moment to launch the decisive attack: "Reason Or Rhyme", a dry drumbeat that seems to herald something reckless; nonsense, two piano touches and it's a new cheek-to-cheek that seems to turn into one last plea, but that's just an impression — the failed explorer never loses his composure, while the six-string, with discreet wah wah touches, doesn't frighten, if anything it reassures.

And night falls, and it's sweet: satin sheets, this is the end, tell me whether I should stay or go. But these are rhetorical questions, born of charm, he has already decided, he'll stay for the length of a sigh and then move on to new adventures. No, it's not the end, he's never reached that famous finish line. Not yet. And thank goodness. He's still here, Mister Elegance, elbowing his way through with the smile of someone who knows it all but doesn't show off, letting her simply believe it.

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01/11/2010