Alongside his usual droll, witty wordsmithery and distinctive dark, deep-voiced spoken delivery, the Londoner and son of Ian also brings a slightly different, more boisterous style of satirical and nihilistic misery with a collection of supremely catchy, danceable numbers in this ninth LP, produced Paul Epworth. With a mispronouncing play on the homogenous high-street pub chain All Bar One, the opener and title track is an infectiously catchy woeful tale of a no-show date, leaving the narrator sitting in the rain outside the bar. Across the album this interplay between dance-inducing synth-pop grooves and against a doleful perspective is an oddly potent formula. Here, and several numbers, Dury’s voice mixes perfectly with the mocking higher tones of his charismatic backing vocalist JGrrey. Schadenfreude meanwhile is a sleek European disco-style celebration of bitter humour in the misfortune of others, and with broken communication and the unsaid also a running theme, there and also the punchy grooves of Kubla Khan. His forthcoming live tour is likely to be a non-stop dance with much of this album is performed. Dury takes aim at all sides of people from “some bloke with a moustache and sockless loafers in Shoreditch” or, as on Kubla Khan, “a fat old Chiswick gangster lording it up in a really comfortable middle class part of London”. Another highlight is the hilariously sweary and angry Return of the Sharp Heads, taking caustic pot-shots at all sorts of other London types, with JGrryy drily singing on the chorus “You're just a bunch of soul-fuckers / You total cunts”, and Dury adding detail in the verses with lines such as: “A sad lunch face, the pasteurised/ Unusual-looking models / Nihilism toffs, your face is curdled/ And all these roads that lead to Allbarone/ And the fashion firing squad/ The moon-kissers, the party-starters/ The Succession people, the absolute/ Return of thе sharp heads and dainty-fingered cunts.”
The style and pace changes on Mockingjay, more noirish indie-rock post-punk, and is, as Dury explains “about a rebel, a romantic revolutionary type. And the song is applying that character-type to everyday people now. Instagram people who post their revolutionary intentions on Instagram stories, knowing that’s as far as it goes … I can inhabit that pathetic romantic character in a song. Maybe that stops me being the person in real life.” Closer Mr W4 mixes distorted vocals into a offbeat melancholy number about a money-making lonely fantasist. It’s a downbeat sign-off on what is a lively, entertaining release, but that’s Dury for you, a magnificently miserable observer of self and society. Out on Heavenly Recordings.
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