The thing with Baxter Dury is that you can’t really put him in any boxes. Sure, he’s a little bit ‘post-punk’ in his delivery that sits somewhere between singing and talking, but the sound of his eighth studio effort aligns more with the kind of thing you’d perhaps find blasting out of huge speakers in a dingy nightclub somewhere. Made in collaboration with renowned producer Paul Epworth, Allbarone is almost like the Radio 6 dad’s answer to Charli XCX’s BRAT.
With an album title built off a complete mispronunciation of the high-end pub chain where the customer base consists of men in too-tight polo shirts and skinny jeans and women who love a glass of Whispering Angel, it should come as no surprise that for its entire duration, Allbarone is a totally unapologetic critique of modern society. Every song becomes more absurd and out there than the last: the title track reeks of drunken pining and the aftermath of trying to piece together the night before, ‘Schadenfreude’ is a genius prayer for the downfall of an ex and ‘Khubla Khan’ is just another opportunity for Dury to air out his annoyances with the rest of the world.
It wouldn’t be a Baxter Dury project without some kind of appearance from JGrrey, whose vocals provide some contrast with Dury’s vitriol often throughout the album’s duration. On ‘Alpha Dog’, she’s there reminding listeners that staying true to yourself is always best.
Despite potentially being quite deeply offensive to a lot of people, eight albums in, it’s very possible that the singer’s magnum opus exists here with ‘Return Of The Sharpheads’, a brilliant musical eyeroll in which no one is safe as he jabs at all the ways people look for attention like ‘pleated, unwashed stubbly communists’ and those with ‘big fat Olympic, Ozempic hips’. It’s brutal, but someone’s got to be, right?
The album is packed with plenty of surprises, but the most shocking falls at the end with one of Dury’s final references to pop culture being through the bizarre name drop of the final instalment of the original Hunger Games movies on ‘Mockingjay’ as a comparison for those whose politics only extend to a story on Instagram. It’s unexpected but not surprising when Dury appears to be so culturally switched on.
Allbarone might be far from the kind of thing long-time listeners anticipate Dury to be making, but if anything, it’s his lack of fear to switch things up that keeps things interesting.
