Baxter Dury – ‘Allbarone’ album review: A shining and energetic contradiction
For this ninth album, Baxter Dury wanted to do something different. Bored with his same process and potentially beginning to suspect that his listeners would get bored too, he decided to change everything.
“It gets boring if you’re treading in the same sort of soil, the same kind of place, and you’re feeding the same people and the same thing, and it just personally becomes a chore to sort of try and be creative like that,” Dury told Far Out. But leaving that same path is tough – so he hired a pop producer.
The input of Paul Epworth on Allbarone smacks you round the face instantly. Dury’s deadpan delivery is suddenly positioned in a club, like someone getting existential on a heaving dance floor. The lead single packaged that energy instantly, as the song is literally set at an All Bar One, as Dury stood up and left feeling pathetic, while the mental image of two-for-one cocktails and men in tight trousers holding them while flirting with women in tight dresses around him makes for a uniquely modern tragedy. Big beats matching emotional poignancy with a sheen of silliness, that’s this album’s whole ethos.
But even still, this is a Baxter Dury record. His lyricism still leads the way with the same cutting edge it’s always had and the same storytelling power, shown best on tracks like ‘Mr W4’ as he caricatures himself, or on ‘Return Of The Sharpheads’, where he caricatures people around him in his native London.
The difference is the tempo. Here, the tempo is raised, inspired in part by the impact his collaboration with Fred Again.. has on his crowds during shows. This is a record that wants you to dance, even through its more poignant and observant lyrics, being evidently clear on ‘Schadenfreude’. Dury is delivering a kind of disco at the end of the world vibe as his personal brand of cynicism, merged with Epworth’s sheen, seems to finally give his work the fascinating sonic contradiction to make it shine.
It finally gives his work the duality it deserves of being both silly and energetic, and also moody and intriguing. It finally pulls Dury out of what he calls “cockney, mockney… talking man music” and lets him be a thorough artist as the nuance of his work and the fun nuance of the beats work in a strangely opposing yet oddly satisfying tangent.
Defining track: ‘Mr W4’ – Somehow, this feels like perhaps the most Baxter Dury song ever written. Moodily wandering the streets of his old stomping grounds, the cutting observations of the city’s stereotypes are matched with a heavier undercurrent of total heartache, pulsing through as Dury attempts to push out the thought, “it was you and me.” Paired with Paul Epworth’s bigger beats, it’s like a racing heartbeat trying to be worked out on a long, emotion march through town.
For fans of: Having arguments over text at the club.
A concluding comment from the team at All Bar One: “We cannot promise that there won’t be a sad singer in the corner of our bars during happy hour.”
Release date: September 12th 2025 | Producer: Paul Epworth | Label: Heavenly Recordings
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