Happy Soup
Album | Baxter Dury
Second-generation rocker returns with best work yet.
Three albums into his career, it still must be said: vocally, Baxter Dury is a vocal dead ringer for his universally beloved late dad Ian Dury, and as he gets older, he's starting to look more than a bit like Himself as well. (That's a six-year-old Baxter on the front sleeve of Ian's classic New Boots and Panties!!, incidentally.) Still, Happy Soup is the first of Dury's albums that fully stands on its own musically. Like his earlier work, Happy Soup is largely electronic in its construction, but the newly minimalist arrangements are a much better fit for his Cockney mumble than the more ornate Len Parrot Memorial Lift or Floor Show. Similarly, a hint of sunshine has chased away some of the gloom of those albums; the ruefully witty lyrics of songs like first single "Claire" are closer in spirit to Squeeze's Chris Difford than Leonard Cohen. The new addition of singer Madelaine Hart, whose conversational delivery and sweet tone recalls indie heroine Amelia Fletcher, is another key improvement. An immensely likeable album solidly packed with memorable tunes, Happy Soup bodes well for Dury's musical future.
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