Cat No: HVNLP214
Musician, writer and Renaissance man Baxter Dury returns with a brand new album, ‘I Thought I Was Better Than You,’ his
seventh studio album.
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.
The album is available to pre-order on vinyl, CD, and digitally.
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 he’s 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 reap the rewards
of it. “Really, it’s about being trapped in an awkward place between something you’re actually quite good at, and somebody
else’s 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 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.”
The record also serves as a kind of extension to Baxter’s 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’ re-appear in ‘Aylesbury Boy’ and ‘Pale White Nissan’, for example, but mainly it’s 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’.
Cat No: HVNLP214C
Musician, writer and Renaissance man Baxter Dury returns with a brand new album, ‘I Thought I Was Better Than You,’ his
seventh studio album.
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.
The album is available to pre-order on vinyl, CD, and digitally.
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 he’s 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 reap the rewards
of it. “Really, it’s about being trapped in an awkward place between something you’re actually quite good at, and somebody
else’s 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 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.”
The record also serves as a kind of extension to Baxter’s 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’ re-appear in ‘Aylesbury Boy’ and ‘Pale White Nissan’, for example, but mainly it’s 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’.
Cat No: HVNLP214CD
Musician, writer and Renaissance man Baxter Dury returns with a brand new album, ‘I Thought I Was Better Than You,’ his
seventh studio album.
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.
The album is available to pre-order on vinyl, CD, and digitally.
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 he’s 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 reap the rewards
of it. “Really, it’s about being trapped in an awkward place between something you’re actually quite good at, and somebody
else’s 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 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.”
The record also serves as a kind of extension to Baxter’s 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’ re-appear in ‘Aylesbury Boy’ and ‘Pale White Nissan’, for example, but mainly it’s 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’.
