Endowed with dad's curls and, on tonight's evidence, dad's crowd
Baxter Dury's Happy Soup LP of yesteryear was quite plausibly the unheralded triumph of the twelve months we came to distinguish as 2011 and, more significantly, established Dury Jnr. as the unassumingly sensational songwriter that tonight swaggers before us. Adorned and embellished in debonair suits and sequined regalia (in the case of the spectrally voiced Madelaine Hart) Dury has come to exemplify a contemporary bastion of Britishness; a concise punk history of snot snared within a sole body. And whether or not we're here congregated to revel in nostalgia he's discernibly living for the here and now, and doing so to quite full and indeed invigorating effect.
Delving into his own personal archives, he opens with the ebullient Francesca's Party that, like a straggling balloon, drifts in most welcomely from 2005's Floor Show and moreover from the deepest recesses of memory. It's given a more hi-fi redux in order that it be more accurately aligned with more concurrent endeavours, including the segueing sulk of Isabel. As if slapped by some spanking rhythm stick its warbling organs engender all kinds of commotion down in the basement, Dury's lackadaisical Cockney vox perfectly offset by Hart's seductive, pseudo-orgasmic panting that trails every slur of the track's ulcer-inducingly tongue-in-cheek "I think my mate slept with you when you were in Portugal" lyrical refrain. Its tensile Stratocaster wibble evocative of Collins' A Girl Like You sparks rowdier gyrations still before Dury takes a breather, nonchalantly swills his 1664, swigs, and embarks on the the playfully motivational pop noir of Claire, lyrics of not wasting "your bus fare" dinging especially true on a night when TFL goes terribly doolally. Amidst the rainforest clicks and caws that inaugurate the resplendently crestfallen Leak At The Disco – during which Dury "does a Kanye" in affirming: "I love ya mamma" in cracked expression – he carves out his inner raconteur, regaling us with tales of recent Alpine hikes before later going on to conduct team talks, ambiguously dispel a potential latent nationalism, charmingly designate us his "little baguettes", and slam British cheese. Irregardless of Alex James' labours of love and lactation, French culinary delicacy has evidently been engraved on Dury's quintessentially British brain following jaunts just gone.
Hart glimmers to bedazzling fore to "bah bah bah" through infidel anthem Afternoon and swoon to Happy Soup like
Beth Jeans Houghton were the Geordie lass left disillusioned with La La Land, seeking solace in an ethereal unknown. The elastane bounce of Trellic slaps all back into a lo-fi sense of security, led by Dury's gruff ashtray baritone and a bass line as tumid as any lager gut, while the breezy seaside waltz of Lucifer's Grain provides fresh respite from the dolorous dwindle of The Sun, from the inconspicuous squelch of Hotel In Brixton. The latter contains one of umpteen references to "daddy" over what proves a gently poignant hour for in numerous ways pater Blockhead has made him the man he is today, whether that be making him soup during Baxter's formative years or unwittingly giving tonight's soundtrack the hoist towards a more general public it so thoroughly merits. And although there may be a veritable Channel Tunnel's distance between older and newer material the despondent narrative of Oscar Brown (fortified by extended baked bean can slide guitar outro); the appositely shabby Velvet Underground-esque Cocaine Man; the expeditious punk of Love in the Garden all maintain indubitable swank.
Dury's preferred analogy when referring to father Ian is that of the 'beautifully made hotel, one side of which looks over an idyllic beach while the other looks over the Gaza strip' and whilst Baxter could be sat sunning himself on aforesaid beach until a redder shade of pale you sense he'd rather be enthralling out east, looking like an extraordinarily bedraggled Hergé character relishing the Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll of it all. For chaps don't come cheekier, chirpier, nor more royally endearing and long may he reign.
