Baxter Dury appears to be in an imperial phase of his artist development. Each album has presented vivid portraits or stories in his own very distinctive, and very direct voice, capturing nuggets of English and international life – and snippets from life on the road or in the studio.
Allbarone can sound like an exotic destination – Mexico, perhaps – or a chain of bars in the UK, depending on how you pronounce it! The double meaning appears to be intentional, as it also frames the humour Dury brings to his work, not to mention the music.
What’s the music like?
For this album at least, Dury is a fully fledged dance music artist – and he goes for the jugular with a set of powerful grooves that have hard hitting vocals to boot. Some – Schadenfreude, or Return Of The Sharp Heads, for instance – hit particularly hard, the former with a brilliant, brooding groove and a nugget of storytelling, the latter with hilarious consequences of bad language as Dury and guest vocalist JGrrey take down the Shoreditch loafers.
Paul Epworth is a great choice of producer, the foil to Dury’s humour, which ranges from scathing to lightly scabrous – and is compelling to a fault.
Other highlights include the vibrant Mockingjay, Kubla Khan, the prowling beats of Hapsburg and the winsome portrait Mr W4.
Does it all work?
It does. Dury doesn’t hang around, the album over in a flash, but its high points are many and the music is a winning mixture of euphoric and slightly manic.
Is it recommended?
It certainly is. Allbarone is a triumph of plain speaking, both lyrically and musically. Safe to say that Dury has long shaken off the ‘son of Ian’ label, for his own personality is incredibly charismatic, his voice consistently compelling. As a result, the music punches with impressive weight, a remedy for our times.
For fans of… The Streets, Audio Bullys, BC Camplight, Underworld
Listen / Buy
Published post no.2,667 – Wednesday 24 September 2025
After 35 years as a successful pop trio, Saint Etienne – Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs – are finally calling time on their career as a group.
International is the last of their thirteen studio albums, and also the most collaborative, with spots for Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers, Confidence Man, Vince Clarke, Paul Hartnoll, and – strikingly – Nick Heyward.
What’s the music like?
Late summer is the perfect time to be releasing an album like this. Perhaps inevitably there is a rich element of nostalgia, but there is no sitting on laurels or wallowing in sadness – though it has to be said the final few tracks leave a tear in the eye.
Rather, it is more of the same – slightly arty pop but with really rewarding diversions in league with the guests. The breezy Brand New Me, with Confidence Man, is a treat, Cracknell at her most winsome in the vocal. Glad is of a similar vintage, pointing towards the club in Tom Rowlands’ production. Already at the venue are Paul Hartnoll and Vince Clarke, with the former’s work on Take Me To The Pilot creating visions of a 1990s basement. Clarke’s work on Two Lovers is more reflective, but again ideally suited to Cracknell’s versatile voice, which has many more tones than we often give it credit for.
The Nick Heyward collaboration Gobetweens is a lyrical and musical treat, rhyming ‘Letraset’ with ‘internet’ to emphasise the contrast between the late 1980s of the band’s forming and the technology now. Facebook also falls under the microscope, a subtly dismissive take in the closing The Last Time. This is where everything comes to a head and a tear comes to the eye, Saint Etienne’s final statement leaving us all a bit emotional.
Does it all work?
It does – for one last time. This is a winsome collection, the band playing to their strengths, and clearly having fun right up to the end.
Is it recommended?
It is essential for Saint Etienne devotees to have the band’s final album as a keepsake; all the more so when it is revealed to be an ideal summing up of their achievements. Equal parts tenderness and attitude, it does exactly what they promised, delivering bittersweet pop winners that cover nostalgia and the future with panache. A wholly appropriate signing-off.
For fans of… Goldfrapp, Happy Mondays, The Cardigans, Divine Comedy
Listen / Buy
Published post no.2,666 – Tuesday 23 September 2025
There is a strong feeling around Utopia that this is the record Gwenno has been leading towards in her previous three solo albums.
As if to emphasise the fact she has recorded much of the album in English, a departure from the Cornish and Welsh songs she has been writing to date – as though she needs to communicate her message and feelings more immediately and with greater bandwith.
She regards her first three albums as ‘childhood records’, while Utopia is set to capture ‘a time of self-determination and experimentation’.
What’s the music like?
In a subtle way, Gwenno’s music on Utopia is deeply expressive. As always, her winsome voice is a big draw, but here the sense is that she is going emotionally deeper. War is a great example, a darker song with a lower vocal that leaves a lasting effect. 73, too, gets more emotional, while St Ives New School feels like a meditation on motherhood, with a coda of real substance.
Dancing On Volcanoes is a great pop single, while Ghost Of You is beautifully song. The Devil may be serious and relatively dark in lyrical content but again it has a dreamy side. Y Gath, a collaboration with Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline, feels multilayered, a song to return to for full discovery. Finally Hireth is a spectral beauty, its cascading guitars complementing another excellent vocal.
Does it all work?
It does – the more personal side reaping rewards in longer songs that are as expressive as they are colourful.
Is it recommended?
It is, enthusiastically. Gwenno writes great pop songs, for sure, and has the voice to communicate them well, but intensive listening ensures the compositions are bound together, both in message and music. Gwenno’s best album yet.
For fans of… Cocteau Twins, Cate Le Bon, Gruff Rhys, Wolf Alice
Saint Etienne’s twelfth album, their first in three years, is written as an antidote to the chaos of daily life, an ambient complement to the sheer speed and noise of 21st century life.
Pete Wiggs captures its essence: “We wanted to continue the mellow and spacey mood of the last album, perhaps even double down on it, but it’s a very different album, not based on samples; Songs, moods and spoken pieces drift in and out whilst rain pours down outside. It’s the kind of record I like to listen to in the dark or with my eyes closed. Half Light is about the edge of night, the last rays of the sun flickering through the branches of trees, communing with nature and seeing things that might not be there.”
Bob Stanley also expressed an interest the band had in finding the state between wakefulness and sleep, a kind of dream space with broken-up thoughts and random memories.
What’s the music like?
Soothing, sonorous and often beautiful. Sarah Cracknell’s voice proves ideal for such an ambient sojourn, whether in spoken word or in the soft vocal tracks that are dotted through the album.
The field recordings create an easy ambience, dressing the music with thoughts that drift in and out of focus. The music, too, finds sharp points of reference among its foggier reminiscences. The clarinet is put to fetching use on the wistful When You Were Young, which has a beautiful chorus – as does Nightingale.
No Rush brings a mottled beauty to its slowly shifting chords, not a million miles from the Romanza of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony no.5 in its ability to stop the senses. Gold is more obviously song-based, while Preflyte opens out into wider textures, bells tolling before Cracknell’s heartfelt vocal. Hear My Heart is a beauty, the voice against a windswept canvas.
Does it all work?
It does. Saint Etienne are masters of pop music dressed with a forlorn beauty, but this clever use of field recordings and textures shows them to be equally adept at making music that supports relaxation of the mind.
Is it recommended?
Enthusiastically. The Night achieves just what it set out to do, which is to provide an antidote to the over stimulation we receive in our daily lives. It is an understated beauty.
For fans of… Broadcast, Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, Bibio, Cocteau Twins
Very recently we learned of the incredibly sad news that singer Mark Lanegan has died, aged 57. Lanegan was an integral part of grunge when it surfaced in the 1990s, both in a solo capacity and as vocalist for his band Screaming Trees. He went on to enjoy a richly creative career for the next three decades.
He did so in the face of great adversity, for Lanegan’s adolescence was riddled with crime and dependency on alcohol and drugs. He faced these with remarkable strength, reaching a long period of abstinence, with those struggles detailed in his recently released autobiography Devil in a Coma. The title is a reference to a prolonged bout of Covid in 2021, which left him hallucinating and in a coma.
All these elements of his life can be felt in his music, his voice often painting pictures of unfathomable darkness, but also using the power of music as a release to help him out of those holes.
My first encounter with Lanegan’s voice was relatively late in his career, after his work with Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age and just as he started collaborating with Soulsavers in 2007. The song Kingdoms Of Rain stopped me dead in my tracks and lingered long in the mind, for although there was darkness at its heart there was a spiritual element that spoke of hope and light around the edges:
The next Soulsavers collaboration, Revival, was even more explicit in its search for redemption, offering spiritual solace in the company of a troupe of gospel singers. A majestic song, seemingly modelled on Bob Dylan’s Knocking At Heaven’s Door, it is a musical treasure – and seeing it live at Bush Hall, London in 2007 it is a memory I will never forget.
A year later I was booked in to do an interview with him to talk about his new album as one half of The Gutter Twins with Greg Dulli. In hindsight, I should not have agreed – it was 10am on a Saturday morning and I was to phone him at a hotel in Amsterdam. It was quickly clear that he was not enthusiastic about the idea, and I got the impression he had been given a busy program of interviews he did not feel happy about. He was entirely professional, but we got through 15 questions in five minutes, and the answers, though unfailingly polite, were monosyllabic. We said an amiable goodbye, but the interview was never written up.
Lanegan’s happy place was clearly in the music, and a wealth of tributes from fellow artists confirm he was a joy to work with. He became so prolific that it was hard to keep pace with all his endeavours. The need to make music was primal, filling the gaps he had previously crammed with other stimulants. Three albums with Isobel Campbell were made, cementing a special partnership that saw their first album, Ballad of the Broken Seas, nominated for a Mercury Prize. The Gutter Twins collaboration, Saturnalia, left a powerful and more guitar-fuelled impact.
Lanegan’s voice was always at the forefront of anything to which he contributed, instantly recognisable. It was shaded like the finest bourbon, but with a cracked upper register that regularly let the light in, like a deeper blend of The Band’s Robbie Robertson and Nick Cave.
He continued to work with Soulsavers, and another album, Broken, moved him from occasional guest to centre stage vocalist.
It exceeded the creative heights of the first, headed by the remarkable Death Bells:
However it was now time to move to a solo setting, yielding another rich vein of creativity that Lanegan mined with 4AD, Vagrant and latterly Heavenly Recordings. With them he made the Gargoyle, Somebody’s Knocking and Straight Songs Of Sorrow albums, consistently fulfilling records that had moments of wide-eyed optimistic in their outlook.
Songs like Beehive were building on the promise shown by Harvest Home, an example from the Phantom Radio album of 2014. This gives a good example of Lanegan singing higher over a much more energetic beat:
Lanegan’s voice made him suitable for guest slots with electronic music producers. Sadly my wish to see him do a collaboration with Massive Attack was not fulfilled, but vocal turns on the music of Bomb The Bass, Moby and UNKLE brought previously unseen elements to their music as well as his. The singer’s stage presence continued to be magnetic, as those lucky enough to see him at London’s KOKO in 2017 would surely agree. Brooding, dark as night for sure – but smiling more now, totally at home in charge of another batch of majestic songs.
Given the troubles and obstacles he faced in life, it is remarkable that Mark Lanegan made it as far as 57. That he did is testament to the healing power of music, and thankfully he has left us with some truly wonderful material to savour, for which we are extremely grateful.
You can read a obituary for Mark Lanegan written by Will Burns, on the Heavenly Recordings website:
Arcana.fm 