Chic thinking, as he himself would have undoubtedly realized in his glory days, is poised to write Bryan Ferry off. In the face of this, it's high time to give credit where credit is due: Ferry, both in and out of Roxy Music, is one of the rank weirdos of rock & roll. In other words, a prize. And, though some choose not to notice, the man's accomplishments are enduring.

It's probable that, without Bryan Ferry, the high-tech wing of the New Wave would never have gotten off the ground. For starters, his aberrant singing style, based more on Edith Piaf than Muddy Waters, blazed a trail in rock & roll for the similar vocal aberrations of Tom Verlaine, Talking Heads' David Byrne, Devo's Mark, et al. Onstage, Ferry virtually invented the detached, awkward, goofy/cool performing posture that's become a standard among certain New Wavers.

But this artist may have exerted his most direct influence with his songwriting, which mated modern decadence to the artifice of technology and, through irony, fathered what might be called chromium romanticism (a feeling that Byrne, at his best, sometimes approaches).

When Ferry archly dropped French phrases into songs on Roxy Music's Country Life, it's likely that Byrne, who'd later pen "q'est-ce que c'est" in "Psycho Killer," was listening. Also, Devo was surely aware of and impressed by the pioneering paean to inflatable fuck-doll love, "In Every Dream Home a Heartache." With these numbers and others, such as "Ladytron," "Do the Strand" and "Remake/Remodel," Ferry practically defined the so-called devo society. (Further, it's no coincidence that Roxy cofounder Brian Eno produced the latest albums by both Talking Heads and Devo.)

Because of what he's done in the past and his continuing hold on some of the finest of today's rock & roll, Bryan Ferry deserves our attention. The Bride Stripped Bare, however, is not his strongest record. Though he's always posed as slick, Ferry's never been as moderate as this. Perhaps in deference to commercial success (which has thus far eluded him), he's reigned himself in here, grounding the kooky flights and twists of singing, composing and arranging that have characterized his work.

Able to lend new and strange meanings to the familiar, Ferry has frequently been an exciting interpreter of other people's tunes. But this time out, neither the choices nor the arrangements are surprising, and his latest cover versions lack the unique ironic edge of such earlier classics as "The In Crowd" or "Let's Work Together." In fact, in "That's How Strong My Love Is," Ferry comes as close as he ever has to being good in the conventional sense of the word–ultimately a mistake for him. Most of the covers are unnecessarily straight ("Hold On I'm Coming," Lou Reed's "What Goes On") or even laid-back (J.J. Cale's "Same Old Blues"). "Carrickfergus," a traditional ballad, adds some dimension because it suggests a possible connection between Bryan Ferry's vocal style and those of trembly British folk singers, but you can't dance to musicology. The best of the standards, Al Green's "Take Me to the River," is a great song, smoothly and adequately rendered by Ferry and crew, though Talking Heads' more bombastic version seems nearer the point.

As a songwriter, Ferry demonstrates in "Can't Let Go," the LP's knockout cut, that his knack for the pop hook is still alive and well. In the coda to "When She Walks in the Room," he displays a more distinctive gift for minor-key variations on the pop hook–something he showed off so well with Roxy Music, frequently in coda sections that would turn ordinary, even silly, tunes into things of grandeur ("If There Is Something" on the first Roxy album). "This Island Earth," with its intimations of a spurned lover as a creature literally adrift in space, certainly hints at Ferry's brilliance as a lyricist, but it lacks the musical urgency of his earlier, similar "Out of the Blue." Urgency, for that matter, is what's missing throughout the new record. Sometimes hinting just isn't enough.

But surely I carp. The Bride Stripped Bare is better than most, and so is Bryan Ferry. If, for now, he's trying to squeeze himself into a round commercial hole, his old fans can take solace in the fact that he'll always be a hopelessly square peg. Which is a rate thing in these days of business rock (to adapt Andy Warhol's phrase), and about as unsquare as you can get. (RS 281)

ROBERT DUNCAN