“I’m only drinking water tonight,” Baxter Dury tells the audience who’ve assembled to see him launch his new album ‘Prince of Tears’, holding up his plastic bottle as proof before screwing up his face and admitting “it tastes disgusting!”
You can perhaps forgive this divergence from the path of rock ‘n’ roll excess, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the 7pm show time doesn’t really lend itself to alcohol fuelled exuberance, but probably more significantly, this is only the second time he’s presented the new album’s material in public, in Britain anyway, and so a little nervousness is definitely evident in the air tonight. Dressed in the trademark white suit that he’s made his own in his latest publicity shots, occasionally hitching up the belt, he warms the crowd up with a few older tracks, including a biting version of ‘Isabel’ with its candid chorus of “I think my mate slept with you / When you were in Portugal”. Then we’re into ‘Miami’, the new album’s opening track and a masterpiece in its own right, Baxter inhabiting the personality of every tycoon, oligarch, sex pest MP and white male corporate wanker that ever lived, all drunk on their own ego and bravado. “I’m a turgid, fucked up little goat pissing on your little hill,” he narrates over a stalking panther of a bassline a rock solid, simple drum beat and Chic-esque guiar flicking. “I’m the sausage man…I’m a river of dead fish – I’m Miami.” It’s simply breathtaking.
After that, he sets about illustrating why people are calling ‘Prince of Tears’ the album of the year. ‘Oi’ is sentimental sounding, but doesn’t flinch in its view of a childhood friend who was clearly a scary bit of work even when they were running up and down Chiswick High Road “being horrible to people”. ‘Mungo’ is driven by an irresistibly off kilter bassline too, and in the hands of a tightly drilled band who can clearly handle the subtle complexities of the material, it sounds divine, especially with long term collaborator Madelaine Hart adding the perfect celestial female counterpoint to his unpretentiously gruff stream of consciousness.
The set ends triumphantly with the album’s slower, poignant sort-of title track ‘Tears’, suitably placed given its final reprise, “everybody loves to say goodbye”. Baxter ends up sat at the keyboard, the band eventually dying down to leave him picking out a few sparkly chords until he, with some relief you feel, beams the widest of smiles and shrugs off the last touches of nerves. It’s as if he can finally believe that he has a corker of an album to take to the road with, and a band that’s great already and is only going to get better and better. Better believe it Baxter!
