2025 is already shaping up to be a big year for spoken-word musical collaborations: One week after Lord Huron presented their new single featuring furtive narration by Kristen Stewart, Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry is announcing an LP-length collaboration with writer and artist Amelia Barratt, who pairs her poetry with Ferry’s moody, ambient instrumentation. Titled Loose Talk, the project’s first single “Orchestra” introduces the two artists’ dynamic, with Ferry noting that beyond the near-monologues of early Roxy tracks “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” and “Mother of Pearl,” he’s never explored anything like this.
“The whole experience of making Loose Talk has had an interesting newness about it,” he shared in a press statement. “It seems to have opened a whole new chapter in my work. There’s a really strong mood to the work that Amelia does and I was very conscious of not getting in the way of her words […] I’m pleased that when we’ve played Loose Talk to people, they’ve said, ‘Oh, this sounds really different.’ That’s what I’ve always wanted with everything I’ve done, or been involved in, to be: different.”
Added Barratt: “It’s cinematic; music put to pictures. There’s possibility for experimentation within a frame. And there’s a freedom in knowing exactly what my part to play is, then being able to pass a baton, stretching out creatively and knowing there is someone on the other side to take it further. Nothing feels off limits.”
Check out the visual for “Orchestra” below, and pre-order Loose Talk ahead of its March 28 release here.
