Bryan Ferry

This was the first Bryan Ferry solo album where he avoided covers and wrote all his own material. In Your Mind is a strong mix of classic rock and proto New Wave. While it doesn't dazzle like his work with Roxy Music, this still includes top tracks like "This Is Tomorrow," "Tokyo Joe" (a dancing musical stereotype), and "One Kiss," which plays like a long lost classic from the late 1950s.

I still hold a bit of a grudge about Bryan Ferry's star-orbit departure from Roxy Music, but
with In Your Mind he's gone a long way to make amends -- it's by far his best solo album,
and at its peaks there are indications that Ferry may well be able to pull the existential
wool over the eyes of the rock audience without his steely former sidemen. Much of In
Your Mind recalls Siren, Roxy's instrumentally steaming last album. Ferry has rou... More >

Ferry has custom-designed a new line of songs for his solo concept, rather than borrowing from early Roxy or his humble forebears, and especially on side one the stuff is appealingly down-to-earth. But it doesn't go far enough. I used to think Ferry's big problem was the fruity baritone that epitomized his deliberate unnaturalness, but now I think it's the hopeless romanticism of his half-realized dreams. If he ever did convince large numbers of people to care about his obsessions, the result would be nothing more than a rather scary collective escapism. (Grade - B+)