Album Review: Bitter-Sweet by Bryan Ferry

Having always felt a kind of affinity with Bryan Ferry, as we share the same birthplace of Washington New Town and even went to the same school, it's always inspiring to know of someone from your roots who has more than made it. His influence on music, pop culture and on a generation has long been a glory to behold, particularly if you hail from the North East. His most recent venture, The Bryan Ferry Orchestra, is a retro-jazz outfit that plays solely in a 1920s jazz style, having provided music for The Great Gatsby and the Netflix series Babylon Berlin.

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Building upon 2012's The Jazz Age, and his acting turn as a cabaret singer in the 1930s Netflix drama Babylon Berlin, Bryan Ferry returns to his love of urbane classic jazz with 2018's Bitter-Sweet. Recorded with longtime collaborator/pianist Colin Good, Bitter-Sweet finds the Roxy Music frontman once again embracing the vintage 1920s and '30s big-band swing he first explored on 1999's As Time Goes By, and which he and Good brought to fruition with The Jazz Age. However, whereas The Jazz Age featured instrumental reworkings of many of Ferry's best-loved songs, Bitter-Sweet features Ferry singing jazz versions of both Roxy Music songs and songs from his solo career.

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Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry adds blues, jazz and swing instrumentation to some of his best-known work thus proving that he can innovate his stylings to a new era of music with his latest album 'Bitter-Sweet'. The 13-track release - which includes eight vocal tracks - comes two years after 'The Jazz Age' which consisted entirely of instrumental recordings. The solo album, inspired by his work on Netflix series Babylon Berlin, is a "remake" of his past music which invokes a sense of nostalgia while managing to put a modern twist.

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