https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter-Sweet_(Bryan_Ferry_album)
Bryan Ferry is the ultimate dandy, the singer that never gets old and who does as he pleases. The former boss of the flamboyant, decadent and glamourous Roxy Music has a profound passion for jazz, and particularly jazz from the ‘20s and ‘30s. He released his first solo album in 1977, These Foolish Things, then in 1999 the magical and charmingly old-fashioned As Time Goes By, and three years later he brought us his vision of The Jazz Age, both instrumental and vocal, of the aromas of Cotton Club, the legendary dancing of Harlem during the Prohibition and anthems from the Roaring Twenties. The dandy Ferry revisits this sepia-coloured jazz with a unique and timeless elegance thanks to his slightly husky, velvety voice.
Bitter-Sweet journeys through the past, both in his vocals and instrumentals, sometimes swinging, sometimes melancholic, set in the ambiance of another era. His inspiration this time came from the German TV series Babylon Berlin based on detective novels by Volker Kutscher set in the 1920’s - the ideal setting for a blend of jazz, ragtime and blues. He revisits old songs from his solo albums and from Roxy Music (While My Heart is Still Beating and Dance Away) surrounded by expert musicians from his Bryan Ferry Orchestra. The ex-Roxy is an elegant, stylish and top-class performer - it’s hard not to get caught up in his travel through time.
Bitter Sweet, the latest record from Bryan Ferry, is inspired by his work on the Sky Atlantic/Netflix television series ‘Babylon Berlin’ a German period drama based on the books by Volker Kutscher set in the 1920s. It takes the musical stylings from that era and puts a new twist on well loved Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry tracks including ‘While My Heart is Still Beating’, ‘Sign of the Times’, ‘Bitter Sweet’ and ‘Dance Away’. The record breathes new life into songs that fans have been enjoying for over 20 years and whereas Ferry’s previous album in this genre The Jazz Age consisted of instrumentals, Bitter-Sweet includes 8 vocal tracks.
Across the record Ferry embraces ragtime, blues, and jazz, and whilst they evoke nostalgia, hearing beloved songs in a fresh and exciting way gives the record an edge of modernity; jazz in the 1920s was the soundtrack of popular culture - itself a modern invention and it’s almost as if we’re hearing it for the first time.
The album artwork, designed in the style of the period, includes a written introduction by Princeton University musicologist Simon Morrison, and in his analysis he points out; “Bitter-Sweet accomplishes what the modernists of the past, in their youthful enthusiasm, could not. Ferry’s music embraces the artifice of art as well as the artlessness of emotion so that the “sad affair” described at the start leads you to “break down and cry” by the end. Thus we are transported to the Berlin of the Tacheles club and the Chamäleon, to the zeitgeist of that jazz-friendly metropolis in the young 20th century - the hedonistic world of Babylon Berlin.
