March 11, 2025
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Ferry's first new songs since 2014's Avonmore, featuring Barratt's sprechgesang.

The first intimation that Roxy Music's ever-suave crooner was collaborating with artist and writer Barratt arrived last autumn via an inclusion on his 81-track Retrospective: Selected Recordings. Titled Star, it implied he'd 'gone Ladytron' - as in, the female-fronted techno-pop band named after track two on Roxy's debut - thanks to his synthy backing, and her frostily spoken voicing. 
The pair's collaborative LP is less clear-cut: Ferry's music was often built upon long- abandoned demos, usually speculative piano with the odd distantly mewled vocal; you'll often even hear the cassette recorder clicking on or off, but Ferry upgraded with synths and faint rhythms, notably on the title-track finale here. 
Barratt's plummy texts present fragmentary narratives a-quiver with unresolved tension and hyperreal detail. Her compadre is talking them up as In Every Dream Home A Heartache rebooted, but Loose Talk is surely but an intriguing distraction compared to that pop-cultural landmark.

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