Every idol a bring down
I really really like / am a sucker for someone turning up with a well-worked-through aesthetic: they always seem obvious after the fact but the fact that you end up groping at combinatorial lists of influences, algebraic descriptions etc suggests . Whether this aesthetic sustains itself beyond a song, over an album or career or w/ever - honestly I don’t really care, that’s not the achievement. Not everyone’s going to be Bryan Ferry. I wish Bryan Ferry would stop being Bryan Ferry sometimes. It doesn’t mean Bryan Ferry wasn’t his best composition.
It happens in comics sometimes - one reason I like Grant Morrison is he’s good at this. Something like KLARION THE WITCH BOY - that mix of a 40something guy’s memories of creepy code-approved horror comix and a 40something’s perceptions of hypersensitive emo kids, plus Fraser Irving’s watercolour gothic look: you struggle to describe it but as soon as you read it you GOT it.
Of course you could say what made ‘Bryan Ferry’ is that it hatched in the context of a band pushing it in different directions, making the nascent Ferry-thing adapt to the environment of “Grey Lagoons” et al. I think it reached fuller potential after that, though - even if I’m not quite prepared to say that Roxy Music’s flaw is that you actually had to listen to them.
