[Report] Two Baxter Dury for the price of one at the Casino de Paris

The British musician and singer Baxter Dury was yesterday in concert at the Casino de Paris and eagerly awaited since the release of his fifth album, Prince of Tears (2017): an album that was shorter than the previous one, but also more cut, precise, eclectic. And as this concert was not only dedicated to the pieces of this new opus, but to others of the previous ones, it is therefore to a certain musical retrospective that the public of the Casino de Paris was entitled.

Beard of 5 days, salt and pepper hair in battle, mouse gray office suit, white shirt, narrow black tie tied, a glass of red wine in hand, Baxter Dury enters the scene after being preceded by his musicians (we noticed on drums the presence of Damon Reece, ex-drummer of Spiritualized, The Orb and Echo and now Massive Attack.

Some call him a "dandy", he rather reflects the image of a quadra office worker, exhausted by his week and the emptiness that transpires. Disillusioned, as if out to mark the occasion and drink one, he laughs and unbridles, sings in his London cockney accent, loosens the grip of the tie, throws it with his glass, and ends the evening in water. But Baxter is not at the party, he has a heavy heart.

Baxter in between, part 1: small details and joviality

It is, on the one hand, with titles with flourishing details and crossed by small puns that the concert begins. It gives pride of place to the album Happy Soup (2011), its melodies that are sometimes reminiscent of Blur, sometimes XX. We will have heard the songs Isabel, an ode to the stories of one night and the countless misty memories they arouse, or Picnic on the Edge, a carried away, almost punk song.

At the release of his last album, Prince of Tears, critics had highlighted the less jovial tone than on the previous Happy Soup and It's A Pleasure (2014), each giving way to fun, melodic, guillerette rhymes, and the feeling that Baxter is always on the edge, in between: on the edge reality, with its little universe perpetually drunk, drugged, unsure of what the previous, next and current day consists of; between singing and melodies, which do not come from her voice but from those of the singers who accompany her.

Baxter in between, part 2: big wound and bitterness

It is, on the other hand, with more confusing titles that he pursues, taken from the album Prince of Tears. Despite sometimes light rhythms, the album did not deceive on its content, a little confusing because disillusioned. Baxter lived a lost love, now lost love. Baxter is injured, he is struggling to climb the slope. As the album shows and hears. While on the jacket of this one, immaculate white suit, he struggles on all fours to climb a sand dune that slips under his feet, he serens his contempt made of clichés and projects himself into small scenarios from which he comes out winner, while he has just lost the one who, moreover present yesterday at the concert, shared Margo for 10 years during her life.

It is also to her that the first titles of the album he plays are addressed, as if to convince him: "Hello Margo, Please wake up, Right now, Don't you think I'm special?" by Mungo, Almond Milk or Oi. As Dury moans, he corrodes the sweat garment and the atmosphere of laments, as if to drive them away. And to finish with the songs Miami, on which he laughs with ridiculously of an imaginary success ("I don't think you realize how successful I am"), and his dark side with Cocaine man. 

We hope Baxter gets better. On our side, we liked it!