BAXTER DURY is both cursed and blessed by association. Cursed in the sense that he's the son of the late, great Ian Dury and thus has some pedigree to live up to, but blessed in the respect that because of being his father's son us critics are liable to lend his work an ear ahead of others in the hope it might just approach similar greatness.
Baxter, though, clearly intends to scrawl over his unwritten future in his own inimitible hand. Yes, his debut album "Len Parrott's Memorial Lift" came giftwrapped in a title his old man would've no doubt loved, but the contents - dense, sprawling, quasi-psychedelic - were a million miles away from the colourful, geezer-littered manor Dury senior would have been found haunting back in the day. It was an impressive statement of intent and served early notice that Baxter Dury was his own man and deserved to be treated accordingly.
And the great news is that with the follow-up he ably proves "Len Parrott..." was no fluke. Because "Floorshow" -aided and abetted by new band cohorts Damon Reece and Mike Mooney (whose credits include Spiritualized, Echo & The Bunnymen, Julian Cope and Lupine Howl) - is another utterly fascinating melange of sound and emotion that's still dense and mysterious, speaks in strange and magnificent toungues while - crucially - remembering to touch base with pop as well.
Opener "Francesca's Party" already sounds like a classic-in-waiting. It's fractured and opiated with a niggly, Velvets feel and spurred on by Mooney's starsailing guitar. It revels in the fatalistic chorus line "No matter how hard you try, you fall from grace" delivered by Baxter is his curious half-whispered, half high-register vocals (double-tracked, one assumes?) which both jar and seduce as the album unfolds.
Admittedly, Baxter can't deny his genes totally, and the semi-spoken verses of the enigmatic and cautionary "Cocaine Man" ("cup o' coffee went dahn a treat") inevitably evoke the ghost of Dury glories past as well as recalling a less playful Phil Daniels. But this isn't a technique Baxter calls on as a rule, and elsewhere the band guide him through a maze of sonic posibilities that are usually beautifully realised.
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Not that they exactly nail their colours to the mast of the easily-assimilated. "Lisa Said", for example, is a bizarre choice for a single, with its' spectral drones and shoegaze-y undertow, though after several plays its' melancholic beauty becomes apparent. "Young Gods", meanwhile, is even more frazzled and desolate, recalling both Magnet and Radiohead, while the excellent "Waiting For Surprises" is dominated by ghostly seaside organ, Reece's rolling drums and an emotionally disoriented Baxter pleading "Please don't ever go, please don't leave me alone." It sounds every bit as affecting as it reads, too.
Elsewhere, the band (almost) bolster Baxter up to rock on "Sister Sister" and "Cages." Both have cut'n'thrust to spare, manage to sound seedy and charismatic at the same time and curiously mirror Bowie's Berlin period (not least "Sister's Sister"s "Heroes"-style chorus line of "wanna make you happy - just for one night") without ever sounding uncomfortably forced.
But really "Floorshow" is distinctly devoid of weak links and makes quite a spectacle of itself in the best possible way over its' emotionally-charged forty minutes or so. Baxter Dury will always be his father's son, but he's very much his own man and if his creative momentum continues it will demand we judge him purely on his own terms for the forseeable future.
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