Baxter Dury announces new album 'The Night Chancers' (listen to "Slumlord")

Baxter Dury will be back with his sixth studio album, The Night Chancers, on March 20 via Heavenly. He made the album with many of the same people who appeared on 2017’s great Prince of Tears, including Madeline Heart and Rose Elinor Dougall, plus Delilah Holliday who he collaborated with on the B.E.D. record. But it also features new songwriting collaborator Shaun Paterson who helps Baxter bring new sounds into his palette of sounds. “Musically I’ve pushed on,” says Dury. “I had a formula for the previous records but now that’s done now. Everything was leading up to the full sound I had on Prince Of Tears, so I don’t need to do another one of those. I’ve done something different, something new, with this one and it’s been fun – although the orchestra was fucking expensive!”

Lyrically, he’s still telling seedy tales of sad and desperate people, but the world of The Night Chancers is set in the wee hours when most people are asleep and those who aren’t are alone with their thoughts. “It’s meant to be a bit Kubrick-y, a psychological journey through the maze bit in The Shining,” Baxter says. “So they’re not all confessional, it’s more of a feeling projected into a filmic narrative. On some of the tracks different characters appear.” The first single is “Slumlord,” which might owe just a little to David Bowie’s “Lets Dance,” and features Dury’s signature thick-accented London delivery, vivid lyrical imagery (“Shiny cheekbones like graveyards in the sun”) and creative swearing. Listen to that and watch the playfully lurid video below.

The cover photo for The Night Chancers was taken on the NYC subways — maybe Baxter will actually play here for this record (he hasn’t toured North America for his last three albums).

Baxter Dury – The Night Chancers tracklist:
I’m Not Your Dog
Slumlord
Saliva Hog
Samurai
Sleep People
Carla’s Got a Boyfriend
The Night Chancers
Hello, I’m Sorry
Daylight
Say Nothing