“Caustic motherfucker”. There it is, right up in the first few lines of Baxter Dury's spoken narration over the sleazy, spanky electro beats of Etienne de Crecy. There it is: a statement of intent, a phrase to relish in the mouth, that show's he's going to make full use of the English language. Of course, it's a descendent of his dad's “arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks” – Baxter has never hidden his musical and lyrical lineage – but it's also entirely his own, coming from a place that delights in the physicality of those consonants, and in the mechanics of storytelling and intonation that would make this a phrase that's grudgingly admiring of its subject.
Then in comes Delilah Holliday's singing voice, and it's as perfectly deadpan, but with just as sharpened teeth as Baxter's, and as the beats. And the tone is set. This album never deviates from the template of stripped-bare beat and bassline, maybe an electric organ chord or two, these two lived-in voices weaving around each other telling stories of abstracted disfunctionality, and phrases that instantly make your brain itch and stick with you for a long time. “Make love in a horrible hotel room”? Well OK, that alliteration works nicely... “I want you to be full of centipedes”? Jesus, really?
This tiny album – nine tracks, most around the two minute mark – is made for the broken, the fag-burned, the weary and the jaded. For caustic motherfuckers too, probably. It's full of betrayal and yukiness, in fact it's just properly grotty, really. But for all that, the perfection of it – the consistency, the absolute dedication to not varying from the sheer dead-eyed sleaze sonically, lyrically and vocally from all three partitipants – makes it a thing of real wonder, beyond pure prurience. A sticky, tarry, grubby work of magic.
