I Thought I Was Better Than You

Product Information

Baxter Dury discography". lescharts.com. Hung Medien. Archived from the original on 1 December 2014 . Retrieved 6 November 2014.

In making the album, Baxter tried to overturn all previous processes, liberating himself from the traditional routine of recording parts, people and instrumentation. Instead, he created rough demos in his living room using barely-functioning machines, gave them to producer Paul White (Danny Brown, Obonjayer, Charli XCX), who helped them come to life in his living room using some slightly better machines. The simplicity of the operation gave him the space to explore more abstract musical ideas and experiment with his story-telling style. Baxter Dury unveils first single from new album 'Happy Soup' - audio". NME. 22 May 2011 . Retrieved 13 June 2021. He’s painfully aware to caveat that, sitting on the Thames supping an afternoon lager, he is not drawing any parallels to those artists (“I don’t have the right to even begin to venture into that world, but I just kind of like a bit of that - it’s an energy,” he says). But still there’s something about Baxter’s latest, with its explorations into his personal history and delight in the possibilities of language, that makes as much sense sat next to hip hop as it does the more indie circles with which he’s more normally associated. Two pints deep and basking in the heat of spring’s first truly sunny day on a pub bench a stone’s throw away from his West London riverside flat, Baxter Dury has - after 40 minutes of amusing wrangling - come to something of a conclusion: “I don’t know if it means anything? I think I’m just talking…”

Release

Yet worry not, the classic Baxter babble is intact, no matter how replete the tunes are with it, the words that bounce up and down and off all points of the song, in moments of tranquility or restlessness, remain ever-entertaining. “I think some of it goes off on that thing, the flow of it has to be free-form I think as well. When I write it, I try not to over-consider it”. Many of the songs on the album map a chaotic sequence of dreamlike events that try and describe Baxter’s journey of growing up, but none as colourfully as ‘Aylesbury Boy’. “This song is about coming from one place and arriving at another without fitting in to either,” he explains, “and I think of these people like characters from Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away.”

About him, and also not about him, it hovers a lens maximised to inspect at the predictably bohemian elite prowling around the subterranean art dens that only enable entrance with a membership, whilst also questioning why he all of a sudden finds his vulnerability with its boxers around its ankles and a cig between the lips, wincing at existence, fixating with fitting it, yet always somehow falling out of something. Hotly-tipped new singer-songwriters Eska and JGrrey feature in addition to Baxter’s regular vocalist Madeline Hart.

"I Thought I Was Better Than You"

Dury’s UK tour will begin on October 10th, 2023, in Brighton before ending on October 18th at London’s Roundhouse, one of his biggest headline shows to date.

That’s why I like rap music; they’re really clever and there’s a sort of natural melody to an American accent and the American experience whereas the English accent - which is informed by the English experience - is so flat because we queue up and we’re neurotic,” he continues. “But then also I think it’s music that belongs to people for a reason so you mustn’t try and harness it; you should admire it from a distance.”

Tracklist

Due for release June 2nd 2023 via Heavenly Recordings the album is produced by Paul White, celebrated for his work in Golden Rules and with the likes of Charlie XCX and Danny Brown. Hotly-tipped new singer-songwriters Eska and JGrrey feature in addition to Baxter’s regular vocalist Madeline Hart. a b c "Rough Trade Records". Roughtraderecords. Archived from the original on 11 October 2007 . Retrieved 10 June 2020. agonisingly puts it: “But no one will get over that you’re someone’s son/Even though you want to be like Frank Ocean/But you don’t sound like him, you sound just like Ian.” In August 2021 Dury combined with producer Fred Again for the single "Baxter (These Are My Friends)". The same month, he published his memoir, Chaise Longue. [7] Personal life [ edit ] The album itself is produced by Paul White. In Baxter’s words “a freethinking dude, very relaxed, and a peaceful dude to be around”. It was White (Danny Brown producer and half of Golden Rules) who gave Baxter a kind of permission to create the record, whilst also becoming an architect hired to build the correct kinds of structures and platforms for Baxter to bounce off. “I had a lot of songs but he can make beats breathe and feel quite natural. He’s good at just letting things be. He doesn’t overthink it”.

I Thought I Was Better Than You confronts what was once too much to be confronted. Some side of the self too raw to reveal and commit to the cuttings of a record. Too emotionally mountainous, too psychologically dislodging to really indulge, and divulge with people. But along came a need for a new vibe that really enticed Baxter into believing that the canvas before him was a blank slate with a few anecdotes, childhood snapshots, uncertain truths, and certain fictitious tales on the edge of both sanity and society to spray against it. Baxter will always beat you to the punchline. He’ll answer his own questions and he’ll volunteer himself as the butt of the joke before you can. His ability to understand people’s perception of him (or who they believe he is) is what has kept his work consistently surprising and inventive for over two decades now. And while it’s his humour that draws you in, it’s his linguistic acrobatics that you stay for - a wild barrage of emotion, colour and off kilter scenes. a b c "Baxter Dury, son of Ian, talks to David Peschek". The Guardian. 12 August 2005 . Retrieved 10 June 2020. It makes one wonder if Baxter, always the wordsmith, never short on a lyric even when, off-duty but on-record, finds it difficult to decide what works, to remove himself after one line is a line too many and a mess has been made of the flow of it all once the mark has been overstepped. “I don’t prioritise me at all. I’m an afterthought” he reveals about the nature of his presence, and impact when a song is hot. “I get the vibe of the song right first, and I think that, to me, is the flow of it. The melody of it and how it sounds. I just need to weave in and out of it naturally”. Baxter will also be headlining his biggest UK tour to date, finishing off with a headline show at London’s Roundhouse on October 10 2023. He will also be supporting Pulp on several of their UK shows, including Finsbury Park on July 1.

Video

Maybe they were rhetorical, but either way, they raise certain images, and ideas, in the mind about who does what, about what goes where…yet still “it doesn’t really answer anything. It has no real, deep social commentary that’s valid to anyone. It’s a kind of Pinocchio nonsense”. Once again, I Thought I Was Better Than You is resplendent with these original remarks, and that’s usually enough to push Dury towards five stars on its own. However, 20 years on from Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift, he seemingly finds his songwriting in a slightly uncertain patch. There are strands of narratives mixed with snippets of assorted absurdity, societal commentary that doesn’t quite fully commit, lines of poetic brilliance that yearn for a follow-up, and this creates something slightly messier than the assured perfection he is more than capable of.