by Darren Clarke, October 29, 2021

“This beguiling debut sounds like hallucinatory space music from an intergalactic hippie paradise island. The instrumentation (played by musicians from Portishead and Pulp) includes a fairground organ and a zither; Dury’s whispered vocal is reminiscent of a small boy asking for a cup of sugar across the garden fence.”

Dave Simpson, The Guardian, on Les Parrot’s Memorial Lift, 2002

Baxter Dury’s life is like something out of a Wes Anderson movie. So, yeah, fairground organ’s, zithers, images of a small child asking for a cup of sugar across a garden fence are about right. Born son of quirky, English musician Ian Dury (“Hit me with your rhythm stick!”) his 2021 memoir entitled Chaise Longue tells the story of an unconventional youth that, according to Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian, “… is about his mother, the artist Betty Rathmell, school days, expulsions, teenage anarchy, yobbo bad-boy friends, posho bad-boy friends, and the Sulphate Strangler (a 6 foot 7 inch drug dealer entrusted with Baxter’s care). And of course, it’s also about Ian Dury – the punk poet who had a withered arm and leg from a bout of childhood polio, who could tickle or terrorise, depending how the mood took him.”

I guess then it comes as no surprise that Dury’s music would tend to manifest, even at its’ darkest, as the kind of deliciously quirky, whimsy, that hallmarks the magic of what Wes Anderson does.

For Dury, truths can be sometimes dark, sometimes tragic, sometimes humiliating but that’s no reason for everybody to be glum about it. Dury’s tra la la allegiance is clearly to the interplay of darkness and light, his music and lyrics consistently, playfully, deviating from each other in much the same way somebody long ago came up with the idea of whistling while passing a graveyard, of too wide smiles beneath eyes filled with sad resignation, of lilies on coffins. The first song Dury gave the world on Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift was Beneath the Underdog which featured a chorus of-

We’re all the same, we’re both to blame
We’re all fucked in the head
We’re all the same, we’re both to blame
We’re all fucked in the head

Let your eyes gently weep upon my sleeve

We all struggle to try and figure out how to reconcile the imperfect world around and within us, maybe Baxter Dury has figured out the recipe- Tell the truth but don’t be bogged down by it. Confess all your sins while the band is still playing, tell your darkest, saddest, tales over simple back beats and floating synthesizer, revel in fleeting moments of fleeting beauty accompanied by distorted guitar and gorgeous backing vocals from the likes of  Joanna Hussey, Madeline Hart and Leslie Bourdin.

Confess it all while the band is still playing.

We’re all the same, we’re both to blame
We’re all fucked in the head
We’re all the same, we’re both to blame
We’re all fucked in the head

Cover black and white photo via– https://www.flickr.com/photos/frf_kmeron/8370233198/