Baxter Dury
The Night Chancers
Release Date: Mar 20, 2020
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Heavenly
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Album Review: The Night Chancers by Baxter Dury
Excellent, Based on 7 Critics
Based on rating 9/10
All of the stories (we'll call them stories for Dury's talent for getting to the nitty-gritty of the interior monologue) depict lovers in various uncomfortable trysts: being left in a hotel room after hours and waiting for the dawn to come ("The Night Chancers"), stalking an ex lovers' new beau on Instagram ("Carla's Got a Boyfriend") or accepting the demise of a life affirming relationship ("Daylight"). And taking into account the album art, that features Dury in various locations in New York, it feels as if all of these vignettes could co-exist, taking place across one single night in a metropolitan city. Lyrically, Dury treats The Night Chancers like a documentary film, giving each character a close-up and shining a light on the dirty reality of romance.
Based on rating 8.5/10
It may have taken a decade and a half for the world to cotton on to Baxter Dury’s impeccable wares, but West London’s very own poet laureate is reaping the rewards now. If 2017’s fifth long player Prince of Tears finally brought about the mass exposure his incisive vignettes richly deserved, its successor should be the record that catapults him into stratospheric territories. A concept record of sorts, The Night Chancers documents the try too hard fascination that comes with social media addicted Instagram voyeurs. Failed C-list celebrities clinging onto the coat tails of the fashion set in one last desperate attempt for stardom.
Based on rating 8/10
Over his last few albums, especially on 2018's Prince of Tears, Baxter Dury came up with a winning formula that entailed him drawling out tales of decadence and despair in a dry monotone. His prickly persona and caustic wit are surrounded by angelic female vocals on the choruses, swooning string sections, rubbery bass lines, and a slinky, trip-hop-influenced nocturnal mood. The formula is perfected on 2020's The Night Chancers.
Based on rating 4/5
Last time we heard from Baxter Dury he was writing with "a tear-soaked quill", as he puts it to RC, "and I wasn't looking up from the desk". Three years later, on The Night Chancers, he's surveying the post-break-up world in which he finds himself - one rife with misfits, and into which he seems to have thrown himself wholeheartedly following the heartbreak that led to 2017's Prince Of Tears. There's a late-night, nothing-good-happens-after-closing vibe to much of The Night Chancers - "good" in terms of wellbeing, that is; there's plenty going down if debauchery's your thing.
Based on rating 4/5
Though, on first impression, the female backing vocalists that populate Baxter Dury's sixth solo LP might serve to further enhance the general aura of slinky, tantalisingly sleazy after-dark activity, after a few moments with 'The Night Chancers' you realise there's something altogether less appealing going on beneath the cloak of seductive lounge and splashes of French fancy. "Who the fuck are you my friend?" they coo on 'Saliva Hog', as Baxter narrates of a "slobby spiv with an open shirt". And really, it's this atmosphere - one of tragic encounters, desperate characters and the teetering lifestyles of society's outliers - that the Londoner has perfected over the past two decades.
Opinion: Excellent
As far as opening lyrics go, "I'm not your fucking friend", is hardly the most warmly alluring invite into a project you're likely to receive, yet this is the way of Baxter Dury. His brash honesty is somewhat rectified as 'I'm Not Your Dog' moves forward. A fragile vulnerability is presented, acting as a softener to his outward abrasion. His character is tangled up in a twisted lust with the songs unknown muse, yet the lyrical progression releases no obvious conclusion or unknotting to the affair, leaving the listener as emotionally perplexed as the narrator seems at the start.
Opinion: Excellent
O ther Men's Girls, from the 2014 album It's a Pleasure, hinted that Baxter Dury might have found a style that would enable him to really express his voice. That style - Dury offering lugubrious spoken vignettes about lives that are, in one way or another, desperate, over a backing that was lush without being intrusive - was the sound of Prince of Tears in 2017, and it's developed on The Night Chancers, his sixth album. Imagine Serge Gainsbourg as a London wide boy in a dirty suit, hanging around ropey bars rather than Parisian brasseries, and you're almost there.
'The Night Chancers'
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