BAXTER DURY
We’ve had two decades of Baxter Dury’s louche sardonic music, twenty years of late-night London snapshots, shuffling basslines, comedown disco tunes, all run through with seedy bleakness and a sweet love for humanity.

 

British musical raconteur Baxter Dury brings his indie croon-come-disco swagger to Brisbane in his first Australian tour after a career spanning two decades. In that wry self-deprecating way of West Londoners, Baxter describes himself as ‘a guy in an ill-fitting ’80s suit singing over a synthesiser’. What he delivers is louche sardonic music fuelled by late-night London snapshots. Baxter’s chamber pop, shuffling basslines and comedown disco vibes all juxtapose a seedy bleakness with a sweet love for humanity.

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After a topsy turvy youth and addled early adulthood, Baxter found an unlikely avenue into a musical career on the back of a performance at his old man’s funeral. That old man was no other than new-wave punk icon Ian Dury. Though Baxter never aspired to be a chip off the old block(head).

Instead, he has forged his own peripatetic musical path, mopping up vignettes worth intoning along the way. Minor characters often take centre stage in Baxter’s songs. Spinning wry stories of life among the well-heeled yet badly behaved, he has that rare knack for making the ordinary sound extraordinary. Hear him turn grey into gold as he surveys modern life’s underbelly in his whisky-bar-at-2am voice.

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“Like his pater, Dury is a compelling performer, enchanting and amusing in equal measure. Between songs he engages in bluff, geezerish banter,… this scruffy cherub could be Jeff Buckley reincarnated as a Cockney stoner.” – The Guardian

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