Baxter Dury – ‘It’s A Pleasure’

Clumsy delivery and saccharine backing make it hard to love the singer's latest collection of kitchen-sink opuses

It’s been three years since Dury’s debut ‘Happy Soup’. What made it such a charming record was his knack for wrapping kitchen-sink dramas in candyfloss, but that trait sparkles only intermittently on ‘It’s A Pleasure’. Standout single ‘Palm Trees’ proves Baxter’s eye for a slick electro-pop groove is as sharp as his father Ian’s was for a filthy couplet. On ‘Other Men’s Girls’ his leery hunt for “another canvas to paint my dreams across” is spliced with glitzy, chattering keys and bobbing baselines, but his deadpan delivery is clumsy. These confessionals swing from simple and swooning to uncomfortably sleazy, but male inadequacy is always at the root of his woes. It’s a shame the saccharine musical backing too often makes it hard to empathise.

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