Chaise Longue

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Ultimately, I tried to write a book about a child that lived in imbalanced circumstances. I skipped over Dad’s music because the book is more about the consequences of being his son. It’s a patchwork of foggy memories, some of which are over- and under-exaggerated, and I’m hoping it doesn’t offend too many people.” Why do you think other people demonstrated vindictiveness or exerted some kind of acrimony or resentment toward you at school?

Oh yeah. I’m a tiny improvement but not that much. I actually shared the same account that my dad had. He had no bank account whatsoever. I have one debit card. Which I’ve lost. I don’t know where it is. Still pretty primitive which works to my advantage, that small amount of money that I had was not quite accessible. I live in quite a strange way. Mine is, I suppose, unavoidably sad in some ways. We were forced to swim around the memories more than most because living in the vacuum that is a famous parent there are various events and things that seem unreal. You rely on those, even anecdotally, to slightly impress people around you, and you end up regurgitating almost constantly your life, or at least your early life. Without you realising it, it becomes a bit of a byproduct. I went into much greater detail in the book, of course, but then I’m probably more likely to talk about my life than other people. Maybe by writing it, I’m hoping to qualify the nonsense I’ve come out with in the past, or maybe it’s to create new nonsense!” I’m always aware that I might be on the outskirts of making the right choice. I’ve never naturally…never is the answer. I quite like that. I’m not naturally fashionable in any way, shape, or form. An accident. A staple vocal presence that compliments even intensifies the rogue, open spaces skulking throughout each moment belongs to Madeline Hart, but new collaborators have cruised through the doors this time with Eska and JGrrey’s vocal abilities (on Pale White Nissan) also feature on the album. “They were kind of people around the manor really. We did it in Deptford and Deptford is an entirely different experience from where I’m from. It’s the other side of the world”, Baxter remembers. “Some of those characters who had lived there all their lives were just part of the process. It was nice coz it’s got a bit of a different personality to it than the snug, West London pomposity fraternity that I belong to. It adds a bit more realness to it”. Baxter Dury announces his new record 'Prince Of Tears' with the single 'Miami' ". heavenlyrecordings.com. 29 September 2017 . Retrieved 17 October 2017.It’s important for me not to take it too seriously. That’s all. There’s nothing really conceptual about it beyond that. If I took fashion or being who I thought I should be too seriously then it’s over with. And no one who could be convinced of what I do anyway. I think there has to be a bit of me that has to be quite self-effacing or aware of that who I think I’m not. Or some strange…whatever. The right side of vanity, the wrong side of vanity are important to be aware of.

From a lyrical standpoint, I Thought I Was Better Than You is Baxter Dury delivering lines and spinning yarns in a way that only he can, albeit about his youth. Production-wise, there’s a strong hip-hop feel to the album. Paul White was sitting in the producer’s chair for the project and has previously worked extensively with rapper Danny Brown. With blood on its bare-fist beats and spit in the wink of any bastard and bystander, this devilish Maserati hangs from the microphone like a man with a crooked posture nailed to his mechanical crucifix fearing for his life with the confidence of a lion tamer that one wrong word will surely tear him limb from limb. The discography of Baxter Dury consists of six studio albums, one collaboration album, one compilation album, one extended play and fourteen singles. When I was young and pretty useless, there may have been a moment when someone gave me undue recognition, but it didn’t last long. I don’t have any contracts as an influencer,” Baxter jokingly adds after a moment of honest reflection.

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It’s me asking the young man in an older man’s body about the reasons for expressing a certain need to experiment with his own history for all those who are interested to see what makes it. and all that was part of my growing up. The anarchy and no-sleep-till-Hammersmith style of the era comes across with sometimes painful accuracy - work on a Monday morning, after three nights/days on the lash, if I turned up, must have been a sight for sore eyes. And one of those things would be fashion which you articulate as being ‘desperate, not natural’. With that in mind, when did it become natural and not desperate? When did you step out of that particular shadow? Ian Dury himself comes across as a total mess, not necessarily in a good way. And yet. Ian was so completely focused on his music/performance that the rest of his life, lovers, and son seem to have been things he sort of bumped into incidentally, along the way. Maserati is a man fresh from a fight. Bandanna wrapped around his head, glowing maraca used as some invaluable object, a defensive symbol to worship when raised above his loose-screw head. From familiar opener Leak At The Disco, to classic Slumlord, this undesirable Ziggy at the Ritz, who jerks and jolts to the throb mutant-funk of Almond Milk punked up to the extremes with extra phlegm and ferocity in replacement of Jason Williamson with Sleaford Mods, who serenades a sea of coned, cardboard party hats worn by the night chancers, charged when sharing the same space at the same time, as Porcelain lovingly unleashes itself in ripples of delicate, Gainsbourg-in-the-gutter melodies and infectious James Chance-meets-Jim Morrisson alchemical cool, to charmingly cast spells, to tug on the arrow’s tail and shoot it through the sweeps of euphoric air composed of cigarette smoke and dry ice.

A unique sense of eloquence able to be deciphered in a way that is lovely and ubiquitous, accessible, and clever. Rather than suddenly being forced to stop before the dividing lines of estrangement often drawn between the world of the popstar and the world of the fanboy. Whereby council estates with railings painted the same shade as pale faces in the rain transform overnight into mountainous golden gates.This is many different things containing many diverse themes. In parts a book about making sense out of imagined realities. But equally it’s a book; a confessional book , a psychological travelogue, a psychoanalytical constellation, a fascinating piece of work.

You mustn’t be in defence of being entitled, and I don’t really claim it either way. I’m a very budget ‘nepo baby’ if I am a ‘nepo baby’. I think someone will have to study the conditions I was brought up and the conditions somebody else was brought up to see if there was much of a difference,” he says of the ongoing cultural debate and whether he’s part of the club. In October 2017 Dury previewed the releases of his first album for Heavenly Recordings with the release of the single "Miami" alongside a video produced by Roger Sargent. [5] It hit me in ways that such lyrical precision often does. But delivered here with a uniquely layered filter, a peculiar opportunity to turn the dial another degree and refocus, even reconfigure, our notions of what a book-about-a-boy-whose-dad-was-a-famous-pop-star can really reflect. In 2014 he signed a new recording contract with PIAS subsidiary Le Label and released a new album It's A Pleasure. [4] Not for Baxter. A bohemian through and through. Etched into his helix, like father, like son. Or so they say. But Baxter as the assumed anomaly in the family able to be observed, and understood right here, as one with a unique palette of colours to identify a line and fill in those blanks. To be what dad was not but concurrently become what was always going to work best for a peripatetic young man, constantly unsettled and restless. An exponent of rebellion, betwixt by worlds run by mum and dad, polarities that didn’t agree with a Baxter. unwilling to believe and indifferent to the notion of being able to synchronise, satisfyingly, with his surroundings. Or his surroundings, wherever they might be, whoever might be behind him, unwilling to synchronise with Baxter.

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I Thought I Was Better Than You confronts what was once too much to be confronted. Some side of the self too raw to reveal and commit to the cuttings of a record. Too emotionally mountainous, too psychologically dislodging to really indulge, and divulge with people. But along came a need for a new vibe that really enticed Baxter into believing that the canvas before him was a blank slate with a few anecdotes, childhood snapshots, uncertain truths, and certain fictitious tales on the edge of both sanity and society to spray against it. Do you see the album as a companion to the book in that sense? There’s a sizeable and profound, preliminary period in your life that can be sourced and started, in this book, in these stories, aspects of your life that can maybe be sonically mirrored in the compilation which covers a 20-year period. He still is. And he always will be as this record when magnificently unfurling, turning and racing up one street and rolling down one hill into the corners of its darkest, rawest moments will intimately, intellectually, inspiringly attest to.