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Baxter Dury — The Night Chancers (20 March 2020)UK flag  Baxter Dury — The Night Chancers (20 March 2020) Baxter Dury — The Night Chancers (20 March 2020)
|||•   Někdy je hezké jen jít do domu člověka~umělce a podívat se na jeho věci. And it’s “full of little fictional snapshots...” A pak objevíš skryté pravdy: Album Baxter Dury není ani zcela autobiografické, ani zcela smyšlené. Stejně jako u mnoha hudebních potomků jsou podobnosti povrchně výrazné jak v hlase, tak ve stylu — velmi zvláštní soutok mluveného slova a ohebně vláčných groovů využívajících londýnskou písničkářskou tradici k rozbíjení neobvyklých příběhů s temně komickými hranami surrealistů. Baxter však není žádným blonďatým napodobitelem Blockheads. Uznávan0 album „Prince of Tears“ z roku 2017 [#49 UK, #46 FRA] představuje zralého umělce, méně závislého na oslňujícím speakerství, více se zaměřuje na náladu a charakter. Pokračuje v dobré práci šestým albem The Night Chancers, sadou svůdných atmosférických aranží, na nichž Dury vyvolává zlověstné viněty insomnických obyvatel malé noci. Toto je kluzký a mírně povědomý svět delikátního světa postaršího muže v prekérní situaci. Možná to bylo sezení; možná celý smysl tohoto chlápka je ohromení tím, že se musí dívat na obrázek, který dokáže pochopit pouze kolibřík. To je šesté album, v němž nesmírně přesvědčivá realita je citelná v popředí. Nezávislý raconteur se vyhýbá velkým gestům a sborům, vždy otočí ruku tak, aby neposkvrnil charakterní studie poražených. Závisí to na Duryově vyprávění a zvláště na charizmatu — hudba (psaná s kytaristou Shaunem Patersonem v koprodukci Craiga Silveyho) je navržena tak, aby sloužila hlasu: v „The Night Chancers“ si nepřijdete na bujaré finty a davově zpívané sbory. 
|||•   Příběh „The Night Chancers“, zaměřující se na promiskuitu, nejistotu a vzrušení z moderního randění, je natolik realistický, že se neodmyslitelně dá chápat jako album koncepční, i když to nebyl záměr Baxtera Duryho. Could he imagine working in a different way? (He did an electronic side~project with Etienne De Crecy and Delilah Holliday in between Prince of Tears and The Night Chancers.) “I could do, yeah,” he says. “I don’t know how that is. Maybe you need someone with a lot more presence to try and bully me into doing something different.
|||•   “You’ll gauge it all based on the success of this record and see how much value you have, see how much someone’s ready to invest in you to do something on a different path. It all depends, really, where people think you can go. I’m a late forties dude with a funny haircut – what value that has I don’t know.
|||•   Son of iconoclastic punk singer~songwriter Ian Dury follows a similarly quirky path.    
Born: November 8th, 1972
Location: Wingrave, Buckinghamshire, England
Album release: March 20th, 2020
Record Label: Heavenly Recordings/PIAS
Duration:     30:30
Tracks:
01. I’m Not Your Dog   2:58
02. Slumlord   3:24
03. Salvia Hog   3:06
04. Samurai   3:23
05. Sleep People   2:56
06. Carla’s Got a Boyfriend   3:48
07. The Night Chancers   3:05 
08. Hello, I’m Sorry   2:22
09. Daylight   2:43
10. Say Nothing   2:45
Review
Baxter Dury: The Night Chancers review — a grubbily compelling reality.
Michael Hann | Fri 20 Mar 2020 10.30 GMT | Score: ★★★★
•|||  Shunning big hooks and choruses, the indie raconteur turns his hand to immaculate character studies of life’s losers.
•|||  Other 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.
•|||  Where its predecessor was concerned with Dury’s collapsing relationship, The Night Chancers — as its title suggests, is more character~driven. “He’s just a slobby spiv / With an open shirt, scales breath / And high level bronzer / Covering up what you campaigned against,” he intones on Saliva Hog. Or there’s the man in Carla’s Got a Boyfriend, who’s got “Horrible trousers / And a small car / Bit of designer hair / Sloppy facial looks”. It’s dependent on Dury’s narration and peculiarly downbeat charisma — the music (written with guitarist Shaun Paterson and co~produced by Craig Silvey) is designed to serve the voice: you’re not coming to The Night Chancers for big hooks and singalong choruses.
•|||  Dury carries it off. His phrasemaking and delivery is immaculate: he plays with accents, albeit within a limited palette, and you listen to The Night Chancers believing it to be a real world.
•|||  https://www.theguardian.com/music 
Review
By Eleanor Philpot | 16 MARCH 2020, 09:00 GMT | Score: 9
|||•  Focusing in on the promiscuity, insecurity and thrill of modern dating, The Night Chancers narrative is so fully realised that it feels inherently like a concept album, even if this wasn’t Baxter Dury’s intention. ​
|||•  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. Whether it’s the dry, cracked lips of the gorgeous fashionistas on “Sleep People” or the female heavy breathing that punctuates “Samurai” – mimicking the sound of a woman reaching climax – the listener is thrown into close proximity with the action, becoming wrapped up in the drama similar to a voyeur. You find yourself unable to turn away, the sordid becoming alluring.
|||•  Tying in with its lyrical bleakness and illicitness, The Night Chancers opts for a darker more sensual sound, thanks, in large part to its 90s hip~hop influence. Channelling the sexual prowess of Biggie Smalls through the glamour of French pop, Dury deconstructs the genre, picking out details that are most in keeping with the album’s elegant air, never dipping into pastiche. On “Saliva Hog” this influence translate into a certain loucheness. The track’s combination of sparse beats, low humming bass and caramel strings makes the listener want to immerse themselves in the sonic landscape, neck deep like a bath, while Dury’s insouciant delivery is sexy as hell.
|||•  “Carla’s Got a Boyfriend” retains a similarly laid back flair, exposing the character’s deepest vulnerabilities. The languid guitar, funky bassline and Dury’s half spoken cockney growl contrast with the airy female vocal in the chorus, the latter acting as a foil to the faux tough guy bravado. It captures the muddiness of the mind when it comes to love, the certainty fighting with the lingering doubt, dancing in our head like a tune.
|||•  The Night Chancers is Dury’s most accomplished work, its self awareness and innate understanding of genre and language shows the songwriter to be in the prime of his creativity.
|||•  https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/ 
Label: https://heavenlyrecordings.com/artist/baxter-dury/ 
Website: https://www.baxterdury.tv/ 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/baxterdury 
FB: https://www.facebook.com/baxter.dury/ 

ALBUM COVERS XI.