Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2024 around the release of a career-spanning box set called, aptly, Retrospective, Bryan Ferry mentioned in passing the original project he was in the process of finishing—a collaboration with artist and writer Amelia Barratt. This perhaps undersold the nature of the partnership. Across 11 tracks, Ferry’s velveteen voice is barely present, with Barratt’s wry spoken-word storytelling instead front and center, like a more baroque Dry Cleaning. The Bryan Ferry of it all comes in the form of the backing music, which reworks demos from throughout his career. For an artist whose career has been a mix of peering into the future and recontextualizing his past, his 17th studio album under his own name manages to do both at once.