Mamouna

BRYAN FERRY: “Mamouna” (Virgin)

If rock usually prefers the sound of breaking glass, Bryan Ferry’s unique; he wants to capture the sound of stained glass. From sometime round about the most glossed tracks of ‘The Bride Stripped Bare’, he started forging this novel and most fastidious aesthetic, an ideal best achieved on Roxy Music’s valedictory album, Avalon.

But how do you get guitars to sound like bejewelled droplets of rain? It’s no secret that Mamouna has had a long and troublesome history, bedevilled by a writer’s block and Ferry’s own perfectionism and was initially met with apprehension by Virgin.

One can hear why. Mamouna will be met with both congratulations and puzzlement. It all depends on your angle of approach. Those who value Ferry as a soundpainter will cheer it but those who want more exuberant rhythms may feel Mamouna sacrifices animation for atmosphere.

Not that anyone should expect or want Ferry to compete for land-speed b.p.m. records but its sedate tempos hardly command immediate attention. Mamouna is a record of hesitation and introversion and it’s easy to wonder if its lack of buoyancy is connected to its long incubation. Indeed it could be a clue that ‘Wildcat Days’, his collaboration with Brian Eno, is the cut with most momentum.

So don’t approach Mamouna as morning maniac music. It’s for the hours after midnight when the candle burns down to a flicker, the album of a man whose moods have been seduced by sound who’s still so infatuated by the rhythm of rhyming guitars that he regularly uses up to five players to assemble his portraits of glinting melancholy.

And this is the peculiarity of Ferry’s music. It’s neither muzak nor ambient but it can be so delicate as to almost risk vanishing. Rock usually knocks down the door to shout “Hello” but Mamouna is laden with the echoes of farewell and footsteps departing down the corridor. It definitely wants to be ghostly music heard beyond the battlements of a castle at night.

So don’t expect to strong-arm its secrets; Mamouna doesn’t deliver its depths on first encounter. Even Ferry loyalists may be initially uneasy by its combination of reserve and gloss but with patience, it begins to glow in the dark. The sedate rhythms start to sound more subtle on the title track, you begin to decipher the codes by which the keyboards and horns mingle with the glistening guitars. Obviously Ferry fancies himself as some musical winemaker, making a vintage to be laid down for the years.

After ‘Wildcat Days’, the most immediate track is ‘The 39 Steps’, a characteristic song of curdled desire with a rhythm of foreboding. Mamouna closes with ‘Chain Reaction’ as Carleen Anderson’s vocals fade off into the mist. Somehow you don’t know if Bryan Ferry’s waving or drowning. Is it now the time to lighten up?

• Bill Graham