There’s a depth to the best of Bryan Ferry’s music, with and without Roxy Music — a transportive quality. “Loop De Li,” with its smooth combining of Fery’s patentedly suave vocal, exotic atmospherics and compulsive beat, is no different.
It also marks a sharp return to form after a curious detour into Prohibition-era nostalgia — of all things — on 2012’s The Jazz Age, Ferry’s lowest-charting solo effort to date. In a similar vein, Ferry also appeared on the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s recent remake of The Great Gatsby.
Both seemed content to reduce his considerable charms down to some sort of dapper caricature, stripping away all of the darker complexity. So, enough of all that, already. The lead single from Avonmore, due November 17, 2014, “Loop De Li” combines the heartbreak of “Kiss and Tell” and the romantic ecstasy of “More Than This” for a new generation.
Elsewhere on Avonmore, Ferry offers seven other originals, plus a cover of “Send in the Clowns.” Guests include Nile Rodgers, Todd Terje (on the album-closing “Johnny and Mary“), Marcus Miller and Johnny Marr (who co-wrote “Soldier of Fortune); the album was produced by Ferry with Rhett Davies.
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