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As Time Goes By |
Listen to some excerpts
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In effect a live collection, As Time Goes By belies its languid title. Concise and varied in pace, the album carries us effortlessly through an exuberant cluster of moods and attitudes that will be a revelation to anyone unfamiliar with that period. The songs are by turn celebratory, witty, cynical, nostalgic, sad. The title-track (from the film Casablanca) and Time On My Hands offer exact textural and tonal tributes to 30's style and its studied nonchalance, while Lover Come Back To Me and The Way You Look Tonight take a brasher, almost breathless up-tempo approach.
It's not surprising that Ferry handles this material with such aplomb - he's been re-modelling classic songs since his first attempt at a 30's number, his camp and lilting perambulation through These Foolish Things in 1973. Ferry doesn't merely resurrect these songs, he recreates the spirit of their classic recorded versions, and would readily acknowledge the great Billie Holiday - Teddy Wilson sessions as a model. Songwriting in the 1930's reached new levels of melodic and lyrical sophistication, which when joined with the expressive spontaneity and rhythmic drive of jazz established an idiom as polished, pointed and passionate as alligator shoes. |
