Bryan Ferry – Bête Noire (1987)

October 31, 2023

Damn son this makes me want to stand on a street corner in a light drizzle outside some nondiscript cafe or bar in an anonymous western European city.

I’ve just lit a cigarette and I’m watching the pretty girls walk by, huddled in their coats and black tights. Inside, the bar man is pouring aperitifs into small crystal glasses for me and my faceless date, who is also impossibly beautiful. Her face is cloaked in a low hanging cloud of smoke that hangs like unmovable fog inside the building. Once I finish my cigarette and head back inside (I came out to listen to the sounds of the city and feel the rain on my face) the title track of this record is playing softly over the stereo. My beautiful date speaks to me in fluent French, and I haven’t a fucking clue what she is saying. But it doesn’t matter. I’m here in this time and space, and that is all that matters.

“Kiss and Tell” now plays over the speakers, and she takes my hand and demands that I take her for a dance. We are the only two people in the bar, and we dance in the smoke. The bar man, furiously polishing the inside of a bier glass with a soft rag, watches us with a smirk.