Bryan Ferry Previews Retrospective Box Set With ‘I Thought EP’

(High Rise) Bryan Ferry unveils the I Thought EP, a collection of covers, original compositions and brand-new music, ahead of the highly anticipated Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 box set release (on October 25th) – a new collection celebrating over five decades of Ferry’s groundbreaking musical career. Listen here.

‘I Thought,’ a beguiling and resonant collaboration with former Roxy Music bandmate Brian Eno, as featured on 2002’s Franticalbum, showcases Ferry’s exploration of love’s complexities. With a lightness of touch that transports listeners into an ethereal soundscape, the song is part of the overarching theme on Disc Two of the upcoming 5CD Retrospective box set, which focuses on Ferry’s evolution as a composer from 1977 to the present day.

The 81 tracks that make up Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 illustrate an adventure in music like no other. A story in songwriting that has been unfolding for more than 50 years will now be celebrated in this kaleidoscopic compendium of Bryan Ferry’s music. The release is a celebration of the performer who has carved out a place as a master modern interpreter of song via a dizzyingly inventive series of cover versions that range from Bob Dylan to Amy Winehouse, Rodgers and Hart to the Velvet Underground via Tim Buckley, Shakespeare, sea shanties and Sam and Dave. Then there’s the songwriter who, in singles like 1985’s ‘Slave To Love,’ has crafted music that stands amongst the defining recordings of their era, yet sound unique and timeless to this day. There’s the futurist conjuring vortices of electronica; or the passionate revivalist, presenting songs and styles from the 1920s and 1930s as if they were the hot sound of tomorrow calling. There’s the figure out on the pulsing nightclub dancefloor, tripping the light fantastic; and the guy who wants only to be alone, slipping away into brooding, bittersweet backstreets where everything turns neon and noir.

Marking the start of this career-spanning celebration, Bryan Ferry recently released new song ‘Star’, a collaboration with performance artist Amelia Barrett, described by CLASH as possessing an “ineffable cool”, tipped by MOJO as “a sinister sequel to Dance Away” and “incredibly fabulous” by Fantastic Man.

Five decades ago, the Roxy Music phenomenon exploded in a technicolor flash of pop, high art, outré fashion, and glamour, asserting band leader Bryan Ferry as one of the most vital and exciting songwriters British music has ever seen. During this ultra-prolific period, in 1973, Ferry launched his solo career in parallel to Roxy Music. His first release, an audacious remodeling of Bob Dylan’s apocalyptic 1962 anthem ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ signaled the dawn of Ferry’s status as one of the great modern interpreters of song, in tandem with his own peerless songwriting and composition. Fast forward to 2024 and Bryan Ferry returns to the Dylan songbook anew. ‘She Belongs To Me’ is rendered in a beautifully rough-edged style balancing shades of the Velvet Underground against the most prominent Ferry whistling solo since Roxy Music’s 1981 rendition of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy.’

Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 brings together, for the first time, Bryan Ferry’s classic recorded output with Island Records, Polydor, Virgin, E.G. Records and BMG, and features two brand new recordings. The album will be released in multiple formats including a 5CD deluxe box set featuring 81 songs, accompanied by a 100-page hardback book containing extensive new liner notes, rare and unseen photographs and imagery. A 2LP gatefold edition presents The Best Of Bryan Ferry, containing 20 songs pressed to black vinyl with variants including a green/blue vinyl pressing and a clear vinyl pressing. A 1CD version will also feature the same 20 songs and a booklet containing liner notes and photographs. The 81-track edition of the album will be released digitally.

The 5CD deluxe box set is curated across five stages, with each disc devoted to a different aspect of Bryan Ferry’s career. ‘Disc One: The Best Of Bryan Ferry’ presents 20 essential tracks. World-devouring singles like ‘Slave To Love’, ‘The ‘In’ Crowd’ and ‘Let’s Stick Together’ – songs that are woven into the fabric of British music and remain abidingly popular.

‘Disc Two: Compositions’ examines the 1977-2014 period, and how Ferry’s craft has evolved. The unfolding narrative of ‘Can’t Let Go’ and the deep mood of ‘The Only Face’, like many of Ferry’s songs, both share a sense of being out in the world, endlessly roaming main drags and backstreets. Elsewhere the sashay of ‘Limbo’ and ‘Loop De Li’ spotlight elements of Ferry’s work that remain unchanged – always keeping one eye on the dancefloor. His great constant theme, however, is love and its costs, viewed from different angles. Three of his finest recordings on the subject feature here in ‘When She Walks In The Room’, ‘I Thought’ and ‘Reason Or Rhyme’, each equally beguiling and deeply resonant.

‘Disc Three: Interpretations’ celebrates the remodeling side to Ferry’s artistry. His remakes of the Velvet Underground’s ‘What Goes On,’ Sam and Dave’s ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’ and Otis Redding’s ‘That’s How Strong My Love Is’ see Ferry exploring the past as if it were now, roaming genres and presciently sending up a signal for the post-punk generation to receive years later – that the music remains all up for grabs.

‘Disc Four: The Bryan Ferry Orchestra’ explores the conceptual project that Ferry began with 2012’s The Jazz Age album, reimagining music from across his own repertoire as if it had been recorded nine decades earlier by one of the great early jazz combos. Ferry doesn’t sing on The Jazz Age, but reappears in a new light. With his voice and lyrics removed the listener’s attention is focused onto his gift as a composer. Ferry refined this concept across two further collections, 2018’s Bitter-Sweet and 2013’s The Great Gatsby: The Jazz Recordings – featuring reworkings of Roxy Music’s ‘Love Is The Drug’ and Amy Winehouse’s modern classic ‘Back To Black’ for the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 cinematic release, The Great Gatsby.

‘Disc Five: Rare and Unreleased’ gathers B-sides, extras, curiosities and outtakes. A shimmering remake of Roxy Music’s ‘Mother Of Pearl’ recorded in the early-1990s during the Horoscope / Mamouna sessions features backing vocals from the great Ronnie Spector. ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ is bolstered by Elvis’s original rockabilly bandmates Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana, recorded for 2001’s Sun Records tribute album, Good Rockin’ Tonight. Elsewhere Ferry’s celebratory take on ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night,’ John Lennon’s ramshackle secular hymn of 1974, was begun in 1995 for a Lennon tribute planned by Yoko Ono that was never released. Ferry re-worked the track in 2010 as a bonus addition for the Olympia album.

Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 celebrates Bryan Ferry’s revered songwriting talent. The tracklisting explores the sonic versatility and genre fluidity of his solo career – from rock ‘n’ roll to R&B dance-based grooves, piano ballads, electronica, ambient music, jazz, country, folk, blues, avant-garde and new wave. At the center of it all is the unmistakable musicality and style of Bryan Ferry.