Baxter Dury - I Thought I Was Better Than You

 

Baxter Dury's new album, I Thought I Was Better Than You, kicks off in bizarre if touching manner. 'Hey Mommy. Hey Daddy! Who am I...'  drones Baxter to the void. 'America's Kubla Khan...' 'The son of Ghenghis Khan...' 'Business Class Villains...'

In less than a minute, the album has established its themes. Its tone and voice. In the words of a friend I was chatting to yesterday, (who already has his own signed copy), it's 'sardonic London lyrics and Eurotrash pop.' Ray Winston in Sexy Beast meets Serge Gainsbourg at the Boxing next to the ring in Paris lighting up cigars, ordering bubbly.

I Thought I Was Better Than You is the realisation of a calibration of persona that Baxter has been engaged in diligently for the twenty years of his recording career it seems, since first stepping up as a young grown up 2002 with his first offering  Len Parrot's Memorial Lift on Rough Trade Records.

Baxter's come a long way since. Utterly comfortable in his skin by now. He's method. Laandon Method. Danny Dwyer's got nothing on him. Baxter is class. He could have been cast in Quadrophenia.  Not afraid to be foolish. He's in touch with his inner child.  He knows, just like Adam Ant did, that ridicule is nothing to be scared of.  But he channels that ridiculousness that childishness to make increasingly adult statements. He's the Guvnor. I'd say he's getting better with every record and he was pretty good right from the start.

An enlarged photo of Baxter graces the sleeve of I Thought. It's wonderful and apt. A man of Laandon, making his way in the world, still haunted by his past. A childhood of being passed from household to household, a vagrant and underloved tag along child, while his Daddy sought fame and fortune in the Pop World.

Baxter is still the small man who stared out at us from the sleeve of Ian's New Boots & Panties, pretending to be a big man. This is half an hour on the therapist's couch. It's a brilliant and sustained concept. Throughout it foregrounds the female backing vocalists who acts as his chorus in every tune. A Greek Chorus via Balham Fruit & Veg Market.

Musically, he casts his net wide. There's Serge. His Dad. His Dad is always there. Baxter will always be 'the son of a famous working class poet,'. He knows he comes with a heavy legacy and doesn't wish to shed it, or hide from it, quite the opposite in fact. But he wants to do his own thing. He has a magpie's ear, a mimic's gift and there's Kendrick and Tyler in addition to Nancy & Lee, and Aldous Harding in the grooves here.. 

In short it's a wonderful, realised concept character sturdy of flawed machismo. Vulnerable. Unhinged. Bob Hoskyns in Long Good Friday. Daniel Craig in Layer Cake. .Baxter Dury in  I Thought I Was Better Than You. Tremendous record. Geezer.