Review Summary: Maybe a chip off the old blockhead, maybe not
Baxter Dury's seventh album begins with him imploring his mother and father to solve his identity crisis. Clearly Baxter is not content to merely address the elephant in the room, but he's also slapping on a saddle and reigns to see where it takes him. In 'Shadow', his jaunty backing singers taunt him by calling out his aspirations to sound like Frank Ocean, and deliver the damning blow - his the aural DNA is just like his famous father Ian Dury.
Or is it? While both share a penchant for a certain conversational vocal style, Ian sounded like the life of the party, delighting in wordplay and wittiness. Baxter's delivery is more introverted and hangdog; the inherited gift comes through a filter of avoiding attention while craving it. Baxter is all contemplation while Ian was all action. This album has the lethargic feel of a man who just wants to be left alone to enjoy the afternoon by the pool. None of the hi-energy of being hit by a rhythm stick here - Baxter trades in molasses-like beats and synths, as if Droopy began melding indie, hip-hop, new wave, and a lounge crooner who refuses to croon.
Baxter does, of course, like to trade in stories - 'Leon' outlines a disagreement between him and friend being caught for shoplifting, and the rest of the album is peppered with snippets of his past, like being driven to school by a drug dealer. This style suits someone who is guarded by nature - this is an album designed to reveal at a distance created by candour. A sample from Citizen Kane blares out in the opening, calling out "America's Kubla Khan" - a famous grandson of a more notorious grandfather. He mentions a lineage of "potato faced" forebears, and how he's trapped - questions of class surface at every turn. If you're the son of a famous working class poet and you live in a house on the river with a prodigious council tax bill, have you transcended your bloodline's societally imposed limits? Baxter finds his mockney position in an interview quip - he's not working class or upper class, rather arts and crafts.
Despite this downtempo hushed style, the lyrics are hilarious. Baxter has a deceptively well-timed delivery, not exactly rap or post-punk Sprechgesang, not exactly singing; but his emphasis points work well to create hooks and memorable markers in the songs. He borrows from the Leonard Cohen playbook by making use of female vocals as a sort of Greek chorus and a stylistic counterpoint. His deep voice is relaxing but hardly pretty in a conventional sense, and he breaks up over exposure to it with his collaborators who can sound mocking, playful, or in the case of album closer 'Glows', just absolutely beautiful. He fills out the simple chorus and becomes melded to that sum-of-its-parts revealed allure for an instant. The questions, the struggles against what we should be and what we are, are resolved momentarily by fleeting pleasure and stillness.
