BAXTER DURY – I Thought I Was Better Than You – LP – Black Vinyl

LP – Black Vinyl

Musician, writer, and Renaissance man Baxter Dury released his seventh studio album, I Thought I Was Better Than You, on June 2, 2023, via Heavenly Recordings. The album was produced byPaul White, celebrated for his work in Golden Rules and with the likes of Charlie XCX and Danny Brown.Hotly tipped new singer-songwritersEska and JGrrey feature in addition to Baxters regular vocalist Madeline Hart.

I Thought I Was Better Than You marks a new era for Baxter, and with this new era comes a new character. Faux-confrontational, Baxter calls him. Here, not only is he recounting his childhood, but hes 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 to reap the rewards of it. Really, its about being trapped in an awkward place between something youre actually quite good at, and somebody elses success. That somebody else being his dad, Ian Dury. As one of the album centrepieces Shadow agonisingly puts it: But no one will get over that youre someones son/Even though you want to be like Frank Ocean/But you dont sound like him, you sound just like Ian.

The record also serves as a kind of extension to Baxters 2021 book, Chaise Lounge, in which he winningly recounted the story of his unique childhood. Not only does he expand the language of the book, using words to paint disconnected images rather than to string sentences (a kind of cockney hieroglyphics), but he often revisits moments within the book. Characters like Tricksy reappear in Aylesbury Boy and Pale White Nissan, for example, but mainly its the abstracted tales of a young Baxter, troubled and in trouble, a victim of circumstance, straddling between a world of Fuck you Leon/You stole the sunglasses and I got busted and a desire for Porridge in the morning and be normal.

Tracklist:

A1 So Much Money
A2 Aylesbury Boy
A3 Celebrate Me
A4 Leon
A5 Crashes

B1 Sincere
B2 Pale White Nissan
B3 Shadow
B4 Crowded Rooms
B5 Glows