Music is not something to be admired. It is something to be loved. This distinction is extremely important and is wasted on so many people that I tend to bring it up time and time again. I can understand one admiring a beautiful seascape or a Gothic cathedral - but admiring a piece of music seems like an awful waste of time. Yet so many people do, or claim they do. Which is not to say that a work of art cannot be admired, quite on the contrary, but do not confuse that with love. Love is an entirely different concept. Besides, admiration (or respect, as boring people sometimes call it) is commonplace. Love is rare. Think of what the great Anton Ego used to say about the best food: "If I don't like it, I don't swallow it".
Music is sex. All the best music is. Or else what was I supposed to make of it when I first heard this:
It is true, I do not have much sense of humour when it comes to 2020 (ask me again later, in a year or two), but if we allow it for a second, then hear me out: 2020 gets a pass because I discovered Baxter Dury. As I was wading through the albums released last March, I came upon a name I thought was vaguely interesting. Dury... Ah yes of course: Ian Dury, the legendary British musician of New Boots & Panties!! fame ("My Old Man" in particular used to be a favourite of mine). Baxter turned out to be Ian's son, and he looked like a French movie star from the 70s on the cover of the new LP. This seemed intriguing enough, but not nearly as much as the music. Because the music was fucking magical. The music was pure sex.
Ian Dury does not work as a decent reference point. Rather, you would have to think Leonard Cohen. Serge Gainsbourg. Only a rougher, cruder Serge Gainsbourg, one with a certain Sleaford Mods edge. This edge pushes Baxter into this completely unique territory where all reference points begin to sound lazy and perfunctory. And he has been different, too. Baxter's debut, Len Parrot's Memorial Lift, was released in 2002, and it might shock anyone who only knows The Night Chancers LP. The vocal delivery, for instance, used to be melodic, and buried deep inside the music. These days, it is very much pushed to the forefront, and augmented by female vocals carrying most of the melodic meat of Baxter's songs.
If you let Len Parrot's Memorial Lift into your life, it will quickly make the inevitable transition from curiosity to obsession. Truly an album to be drowned in. It is dreamy but it has substance. It envelopes you with these great melodic grooves that feature pianos, tastefully distorted guitars, violins and, of course, plenty of female vocals. Dury's next album, the masterful Floor Show (2005), was in the same vein - but the songs were getting sharper and shorter. This sharpness would come into focus on Happy Soup (2011), a classic pop album that alternates bass-heavy 'hits' like "Isabel" with bass-heavy 'ballads' like "Leak at the Disco". Old Baxter Dury gave way to new Baxter Dury, and both It's A Pleasure (2014) and Prince Of Tears (2017) further perfected the style: sweet pop hooks à la Françoise Hardy mixed with Baxter's gruff and mysterious and oddly poetic spoken-word narratives. Last year's The Night Chancers was him taking that style to its limit, and I loved every second of it. It was nocturnal and synth-oriented. It was him doing so much with so little.
There was also a left-field collaboration with Étienne de Crécy & Delilah Holliday in 2018 called B.E.D, a rather slight 20-minute record of stylish synthpop - hardly essential, but the juxtaposition of expression and restraint was impressive. It was a fitting collaboration, too, the sort of record that just begs for a cult following in France. And the same goes for Baxter Dury's whole body of work. There is an hour long video on YouTube featuring Dury's concert at some tiny club in Paris from a few years ago. It is perfect. In fact, it reminds me of the last line in The Hollywood Ending. I will not reveal it here. The Hollywood Ending is an overlooked Woody Allen classic, and you would be a fool not to discover it for yourself.
