As part of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry helped to shape pop music and to make some of the most progressive albums the genre has ever seen. However, he has never played the game completely by the rules, which is why it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that he has released an album comprised solely of covers from the golden era of the ’30s, penned by acknowledged masters like Cole Porter, Herman Hupfeld and Anderson & Weill.

What may surprise many is that, for the most part, Ferry plays it straight. Where he might have dolled up these classics in ’90s instrumentation and production, he prefers to let them breathe much the way they would have 60 years ago. The songs are laden with strings, brass and even harp, but despite having about a quarter of an orchestra on board, they still sound refreshingly

minimalist.

Ferry also proves he’s quite a crooner when the mood takes him. On tracks like the swinging ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ or the semi-jazz undertones of ‘Easy Living’ he seems to transport you easily back to the elegant ballrooms and cafes of ’30s high society. There’s a touch of melodrama about Rogers & Hart’s ‘Where Or When’ and the closing ‘September Song’, but this only adds to the mood of nostalgia.

In fact, ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’ is the only track that sounds like it was recorded in this decade, the slow rhumba beat proving full of eastern promise, while a French woman Alice Retif recites poetry in the background.

As Time Goes By is a delightful collection of songs, where Bryan Ferry proves that he has both the talent and the temperament to handle some of the classics from the early part of this century. His offer of “a trip to the moon on gossamer wings” (‘Just One Of Those Things’) is an invitation for the hopeless romantic in all of us.