Say Nothing closes The Night Chancers with the repeated refrain ‘Baxter…loves you’, a mantra which could be taken in a number of ways, from a paternalistic distance to an up-close, overly physical encounter.
The song is the climax (sorry) to a record on which the Londoner lifts up the skirts of his hometown for us all to see what’s underneath; in a circus filled with sleazy characters, drugs and good times going bad, it’s a landscape that through a filmic lens owes more to Snatch than Notting Hill.
This is a place where Dury prowls, his guttural brogue like worn tyres on gravel, eyes having seen a dozen things that can’t be unseen. The last time our paths crossed was on 2017’s lairy, sweary Prince Of Tears, but whilst that was a break-up album, this is something else.
Being different manifests itself in numerous guises; firstly there’s the spoken word, alt-Gainsbourg rasp of opener I’m Not Your Dog, a glimpse through the peep show hole which ripples with spoilt, off kilter Euro trash programming, or in the genius free association of Slumlord, Dury quipping, ‘Charm dripping like fresh honey/I’m the milky bar kid/Soiled trousers/Shiny cheekbones like graveyards in the sun/Murder shoes/Dirty eyes sizing up’.
You wonder just how far, metaphorically, the our boy has had to go to end up here, especially as here is in fact the west London he’s been haunting for decades: produced by Craig Silvery, The Night Chancers was recorded in Hampstead, not exactly a cesspit, but that depends of course where and when you go looking. His bleary gaze pauses from time to time, dwelling on the ghouls that haunt social media (the lugubrious Saliva Hog), the vacuous nano-bubble hype of fashion bloggers (Sleep People) and the leftfield optimism of the insomniac as they greet a new day with bloodshot ennui (Daylight).
Even amongst this grand prix of personality car crashes, The Night Chancers’ centrepiece is the title-track. Opening with a dog barking, and under some tatty-elegant strings, the singer lies awoken in a deserted hotel room after a one night stand with half of it having left and a raucous party going on in the room next door. Slowly you begin to understand that it’s these people – those losing themselves at 3am, hedonists with no hopes for a tomorrow which has already arrived – who are Dury’s real heroes. Amongst the rubble of modern life and its card carrying despots in every unlit doorway, for him just knowing that there are still those who live like leaves in a hurricane means that he still has connection, even if it’s hard to specify what sort.
Once you get this then it’s easy to pivot from feeling slightly awkward about this record to having the sort of deep affection for it that its creator has both for his neighbourhood and all the creatures in it. Baxter loves you alright, and The Night Chancers is a record that should make a lot of people throw that shine straight back at him.
