Album Review: Baxter Dury, Allbarone

Baxter Dury describes this ninth album, his first with super-producer Paul Epworth, as “critical of people” and he’s not wrong. The Cockney electro-poet is not overly enamoured of his fellow humans, and he’s not afraid to let us know, with liberal use of the c-word.

Album opener and title track, ‘Allbarone’, recalls a character sitting outside an All Bar One in the rain, albeit pronounced like an Italian village rather than the British pub chain. It’s a furiously busy breakbeat, over which Baxter waxes world weary; it’s edgy and giddy at the same time, propelled by a nervous energy that’s equal parts knowing and anxious.

Baxter is our wide boy tour guide to 21st century British society, from the so-damn-funky-it’s-impossible-to-dislike ‘Kubla Khan’ to the quietly menacing ‘The Other Me’. ‘Alpha Dog’ begins like Daft Punk, all liquid bass and backing vocals, before Dury’s droll Cockney drawl drags us back into the neon glare of the gutter, while ‘Hapsburg’ comes across less frantic musically, but the lyrics are just as barbed.

The x-rated diatribe of ‘Return Of The Sharp Heads’ comes across like a foul-mouthed echo of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’, the chorus intoning “You’re just a bunch of soul-fuckers.” It’s easy to admire but perhaps hard to love. Conversely, ‘Mockingjay’ is Dury at his most commercial; a strident, stirring call to arms, which is amongst the finest three minutes of his career.

7.5/10