I Thought I Was Better Than You

Musician, writer and Renaissance man Baxter Dury returns with his seventh studio album, I Thought I Was Better Than You, and with this new era comes a new character. "Faux-confrontational," Baxter calls him. Here, not only is he recounting his childhood, but he's also reckoning with it. Instead of just swinging at his past blindfolded with a baseball bat, he talks openly about the toxic cocktail of being born into unfortunately fortunate circumstances, with a persuasive surname but no structure or sense of responsibility with which to reap the rewards of it. "Really, it's about being trapped in an awkward place between something you're actually quite good at, and somebody else's success." That 'somebody else' being his dad, Ian Dury. As "Shadow", one of the album centerpieces agonizingly puts it: "But no one will get over that you're someone's son/Even though you want to be like Frank Ocean/But you don't sound like him, you sound just like Ian." The album was produced by Paul White, celebrated for his work in Golden Rules and with the likes of Charli XCX and Danny Brown, and features hotly-tipped new singer-songwriters Eska and JGrrey feature in addition to Baxter's regular vocalist Madeline Hart.