- It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
- Cruel
- Goin' Down
- Goddess Of Love
- Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
- Nobody Loves Me
- Ja Nun Hons Pris
- A Fool For Love
- Goodnight Irene
- Hiroshima...
- San Simeon
- One Way Love
- I Thought
Elegance in Ruin
By the time Frantic arrived in 2002, Bryan Ferry had already spent three decades perfecting the art of sophisticated melancholy. Yet this album stands apart - not as a reinvention, but as a reconciliation. Here, Ferry embraces every facet of his persona: the suave crooner, the wistful romantic, the art-school experimentalist. Frantic feels like an artist looking back on the wreckage and beauty of his past, finding renewed life in both.
The record is steeped in contrasts - vintage textures meeting modern sheen, emotional vulnerability wrapped in immaculate tailoring. Ferry’s voice, now burnished with age, carries a new kind of authority. The smooth detachment of his Roxy Music years has deepened into something more human, more haunted. Every phrase feels weighted with memory, as though he’s singing not just of lost love, but of time itself.
Musically, Frantic traverses familiar Ferry territory - rock filtered through romance, pop gilded with melancholy - but with a looser, more lived-in grace. The arrangements shimmer with tasteful restraint: guitars sigh, keyboards murmur, rhythms pulse like a heartbeat. There’s a cinematic quality throughout, but the glamour is cracked at the edges. This isn’t the sound of youth’s decadence; it’s the sound of reflection after the lights have dimmed.
What makes Frantic so compelling is its tone of elegant weariness. Ferry doesn’t chase trends or posture for relevance - he simply inhabits his world, and invites the listener into it. The result is music that feels timeless precisely because it accepts the passage of time. It’s nostalgic but never sentimental, polished but never hollow. Beneath the surface poise lies something raw: an artist acknowledging both his myth and his mortality.
In the end, Frantic is less a collection of songs than a portrait of endurance. It captures Ferry as both survivor and stylist - still immaculate, still mysterious, but finally allowing the cracks to show. In those cracks lies the truth that’s always haunted his work: beauty fades, but style, when anchored in sincerity, becomes eternal.
The record is steeped in contrasts - vintage textures meeting modern sheen, emotional vulnerability wrapped in immaculate tailoring. Ferry’s voice, now burnished with age, carries a new kind of authority. The smooth detachment of his Roxy Music years has deepened into something more human, more haunted. Every phrase feels weighted with memory, as though he’s singing not just of lost love, but of time itself.
Musically, Frantic traverses familiar Ferry territory - rock filtered through romance, pop gilded with melancholy - but with a looser, more lived-in grace. The arrangements shimmer with tasteful restraint: guitars sigh, keyboards murmur, rhythms pulse like a heartbeat. There’s a cinematic quality throughout, but the glamour is cracked at the edges. This isn’t the sound of youth’s decadence; it’s the sound of reflection after the lights have dimmed.
What makes Frantic so compelling is its tone of elegant weariness. Ferry doesn’t chase trends or posture for relevance - he simply inhabits his world, and invites the listener into it. The result is music that feels timeless precisely because it accepts the passage of time. It’s nostalgic but never sentimental, polished but never hollow. Beneath the surface poise lies something raw: an artist acknowledging both his myth and his mortality.
In the end, Frantic is less a collection of songs than a portrait of endurance. It captures Ferry as both survivor and stylist - still immaculate, still mysterious, but finally allowing the cracks to show. In those cracks lies the truth that’s always haunted his work: beauty fades, but style, when anchored in sincerity, becomes eternal.
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My personal view:
An intelligent blend of covers and original songs, the album sounds like an overview of his career, evoking Roxy Music in some songs, and his preceding albums in others. As was to be expected, the two Dylan covers (It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right) are great, but there's plenty to enjoy in other songs, such as Goddess Of Love, Nobody Loves Me, A Fool For Love, Hiroshima..., I Thought, and especially San Simeon.