Rough-voiced, engaging songwriter and vocalist who spins witty tales of bad behavior over spare, often hip-hop-influenced grooves.
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.
Taking influence from American artists like Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator and Vegyn to name a few, we can hear the essence of this drowsy, psychedelic west-coast hip-hop oozing through. It was not so much the sound of this kind of music that inspired him, but more its delicacy, effeminacy, and its genre-fluidity; how it remains unburdened by restrictive musical structures.
