| Musician, writer and Renaissance man Baxter Dury releases ‘Celebrate Me‘, the third track from his forthcoming seventh studio album I Thought I Was Better Than You. Due for release Friday, June 2 through Heavenly Recordings, the album is produced by Paul White, celebrated for his work in Golden Rules and with the likes of Charli XCX and Danny Brown. On his new track, Baxter said: “[It’s a] stream of consciousness rant about being predictably bohemian, west London-ish and attention seeking.” Baxter Dury’s latest album, I Thought I Was Better Than You, is a new era for him, and with this new era comes a new character. “Faux-confrontational,” Baxter calls him. Here, not only is he recounting his childhood, but he’s also reckoning with it. Instead of just swinging at his past blindfolded with a baseball bat, he talks openly about the toxic cocktail of being born into unfortunately fortunate circumstances, with a persuasive surname but no structure or sense of responsibility with which reap the rewards of it. “Really, it’s about being trapped in an awkward place between something you’re actually quite good at, and somebody else’s success.” That ‘somebody else’ being his dad, Ian Dury. As one of the album centrepieces – ‘Shadow‘ – agonisingly puts it: “But no one will get over that you’re someone’s son / Even though you want to be like Frank Ocean / But you don’t sound like him, you sound just like Ian.”I Thought I Was Better Than You by Baxter Dury is out June 2 on Heavenly Recordings Pre-save: https://ffm.to/ithoughtiwasbetterthanyou |
Photo credit: Tom Beard
Snap Scene: Baxter Dury, Rising Festival, The Forum, 7th June 2022 by Mary Boukouvalas
Balearic crooner, glamourous punk, acerbic poet—Baxter Dury’s persona is kitted out in many finely-tailored guises. A villain with a heart of gold, Dury is a hopeless romantic, wading through filthy gutters in search of the transcendent.
Over two decades Baxter Dury has performed something of a sneak attack, compiling a formidable catalogue of scuzzy disco, French-inflected house music, and shuddering post-punk that can kick you right in the tear ducts. Yes, Dury’s old man Ian is an icon of British music (that’s a tiny Baxter on the cover of New Boots and Panties!!), but Dury has crafted his own world, one that treasures the women who truly raised him.
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