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8 / 10 A true cult hero, Baxter Dury’s third album is his most accomplished yet. Way more lo-fi than its excellent predecessors, ‘Happy Soup’ is so simple in its structure that it really shouldn’t work. But work it does, with tracks skimming from scratchy psychedelia (‘Afternoon’) to bare-boned ska, to the sumptuous, fall-down-the-stairs fuckery of ‘The Sun’.

As always, there’s a subtle element of Dury Snr (that London drawl, the seedy lyrics), but it’s the schoolgirl backing vocals of Madelaine Hart – sounding like she’s been beamed straight out of the 2-Tone stable – and Dury’s cracked realisation that “the monsoons of fear and age” are inescapable that cut through hardest here.

Matt Wilkinson

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Date/Time	Venue	Town/City	Seetickets	Viagogo
Jun 08, 2012 19:00	Alexandra Palace	Wood Green, London	Buy Baxter Dury Tickets from £11	Buy Baxter Dury Tickets
Oct 17, 2012 19:30	Scala	London	Tickets not currently available.	Buy Baxter Dury Tickets from £65
Oct 17, 2012 20:00	Scala	London	Buy Baxter Dury Tickets from £11	Buy Baxter Dury Tickets from £65
Oct 17, 2012 20:00	Scala	London	Buy Baxter Dury Tickets from £11	Buy Baxter Dury Tickets from £65