His lyrics are hopeless, his covers are catastrophic, yet I still love Bryan Ferry

There were two new albums I wanted for Christmas — the Bryan Ferry and the Pink Floyd — and to my delight I got both. Others may prefer the unknown and the experimental as presents, but at this time of year I favour the pop music equivalent of a decent scarf or a new pair of slippers. The Pink Floyd we shall leave until later, on the reasonable grounds that I haven’t listened to it yet. But the new Ferry album, Avonmore (BMG), is splendid, as warm and elegant as a cashmere scarf, as perfectly snug as the fluffiest slippers. For those of us who have followed Ferry moderately slavishly for several decades, it ticks all the boxes. And what are those boxes, precisely?

It’s the same but different. We would be foolish to expect anything drastically new from one of rock’s elder statesmen, and we are not fools. Avonmore sounds a lot like his last album of original material, Olympia, and a little like all his and Roxy Music’s albums since Flesh + Blood in 1980.