Baxter Dury announces new album ‘Allbarone,’ shares title track

Baxter Dury is back and just announced Allbarone, his eighth album, which will be released September 12 via Heavenly. (His last album was 2023’s excellent I Thought I Was Better Than You.) It was produced by Paul Epworth, who is most famous for working with Adele and Florence but has also twiddled knobs for FKA twigs, Bloc Party, The Futureheads and more. “I knew him a bit from a circle of mates, but only had had a beer or two with over the years,” Baxter says of Epworth. “He was sort of this mythological character, but he said he really wanted to work with me. Seeing us triggered something in him, he thought that he could produce music for me that would be more direct, more energetic.”

“I don’t want to say it’s contemporary, because I sound like a cunt using that word,” Baxter says of Allbarone. “But it does sound really contemporary. It doesn’t sound like a Harrods hamper band made it. It doesn’t sound like a band made it all. Which is what I wanted most of all. It’s just something that’s brand new for me. It’s quite exciting, really.”

The first single from Allbarone is its electro-fueled title track, which Baxter says was the first he and Epworth worked on for the album. “It quickly established why it was a good idea that we were working together,” he says. “It’s a song about sitting in the rain outside an All Bar One contemplating why what just happened, happened in the way it did.”

You might notice that All Bar One, a UK chain of “posh wine bars for people on apps,” is “Allbarone” minus the spaces between the words and pronounced as if it was Italian.

Dury continues: “It’s kind of a character arc that goes through the whole thing, two personalities It’s very critical of people, this album, whoever they are, maybe some bloke with a moustache and sockless loafers in Shoreditch or a fat old Chiswick gangster lording it up in a really comfortable middle class part of London.”

Speaking of Italy, the “Allbarone” video was shot on the canals of Venice and you can watch that below.

Allbarone
1. Allbarone
2. Schadenfreude
3. Kubla Khan
4. Alpha Dog
5. The Other Me
6. Hapsburg
7. Return Of The Sharp Heads
8. Mockingjay
9. Mr W4