Baxter Dury tells us about teaming up with Paul Epworth for ‘Allbarone’: “I was born into chaos, he framed that”
Baxter Dury has teamed up with Paul Epworth for his dance-leaning new album ‘Allbarone’. Check out the title track, along with details of his 2025 headline tour and our exclusive interview with Dury below.
Due for release on September 12 via Heavenly Recordings, the indie veteran’s ninth LP ‘Allbarone’ was produced by Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence & The Machine, Rihanna, U2) – marking the first album he’s worked on in over five years.
“We were mates and we decided to try something out,” Dury told NME. “This single was the second or third thing we did.
“I made a suggestion about the kind of music I wanted to make and gave him a few ideas. He almost ignored them, and I was a bit miffed. It turned into a creative exorcism and it took me a few moments to process what it was. The music was quite jarring, and I quickly responded to it. The core elements of formed within a matter of minutes. That’s all I remember. That’s where our musical bond was confirmed and I knew this was going to be very good.”
The duo decided to collaborate together after Epworth caught Dury’s set at Glastonbury 2024. Months later, they were working at Epworth’s North London Church Studios. Feeling challenged to leave his indie tendencies behind, Dury picked up where he left off after his 2021 Fred Again.. collab ‘These Are My Friends’ and dance away from his comfort zone to make music to match his unpredictable energy.
“I was born into chaos,” said Dury of his young life as the son of The Blockheads’ icon. “You can never not seek that out. A drama will always occur. My energy will always find the maddest person in the room. Things are always going to happen.”
Check out our full interview with Dury below, where he tells us about that night in an All Bar One, stepping on to the dancefloor, and what he learned from his time with Fred Again…
NME: Hello Baxter Dury. ‘Allbarone’ is a banger. Did you set out to turn a certain chain pub into a mythical wonderland?
Baxter Dury: “I find it something of a ‘romantasy’ – but not about people. It’s about fictional romance, whatever that means. I ended up in an All Bar One once in Manchester, and I did actually find myself on my own. The only thing that was humorous was that someone had called it ‘Allbarone’. That was the only thing that lightened up the moment. Everything else about the night was depressing!”
How do you rank All Bar One against your other UK pub chains? Wetherspoons, for instance?
“I haven’t been there since, and I’d never go to ‘Spoons! I found my son in ‘Spoons recently when I had to go get him, but that’s the nearest I’ve got.”
What does this song capture about the album?
“It’s an energy. I guess everyone’s always trying to do something different and that can be a bit of a tiresome thing. It’s quite a unique pairing: something quite posh – posh musically like Paul Epworth – while I consider myself quite shop-soiled. It’s a good blend; it’s like framing my chaos. It turns what I do into a form on pop music.”
Epworth is like the champagne of producers…
“Yes, it’s an awkward hybrid. We do different things. He’s very clever. I discussed trying to make our live show something more ‘elevated’. I was looking for energy, and then you naturally start talking about dance music. Dance music, when done cleverly, is incredibly effective. It’s done through a sort of hypnosis. I feel like both of our instincts are about songwriting.”
What was it about your Glastonbury set that pulled him out of retirement?
“We knew each other anyway. We had ‘a couple of pints’ level of friendship. He saw me before I played Glastonbury, and you know when producers politely say, ‘Yeah, we should work together’ as standard. You roll out that sentence when you see an old mate.
“After the set, I could see it in his eyes: he meant it. A week later I was at his birthday party after being suddenly invited. It seemed to me that he’d been through various trials and just wanted to get his head around something different, something that he could get inspired by to be creative. It was serendipitous and great timing. We were both just at the right place.”
Did you have notions of making an Adele or U2-sized record with him before hitting the studio?
“That’s the byproduct of his success. He made them into that, then all the fat cats roll up once you’ve won a Grammy. He’d had long enough contemplating what he was for this to take him back to his creative beginnings. This wasn’t on that conveyor belt anymore or cynically done.
“I’m not delusional. I make music for the sake of music and not because of what I think it could achieve. It just has to be good. I was uncertain of how it would work with Paul but I was immediately blown away. He’s also an absolute expert on dance music.”
What can you tell us about the character of the rest of the album?
“Paul took away the way of me controlling something. We all build up these unknown formulas, and it takes someone a bit bigger than you to challenge that. He stripped all that away. He wrote music and I responded to it. We wrote it all in a month and a half. It was all made up on the spot, and it really benefits from that. It’s a really interesting time and a fun record to make in a posh and palatial studio.
“The good thing about Paul is that he doesn’t really question much – whereas I’m in a sort of ballet of self-doubt. He doesn’t listen back to what you did yesterday to see if it was better, he just moves forward. That was the attitude and it really worked. I learned quite a lot.”
‘Ballet Of Self-Doubt’ would have been a cracking album title…
“That’s the next one, when I crash again after this one.”
Lyrically, what is the album dealing with?
“It’s a ‘romantasy’, the whole thing. I lost my licence when I was doing the album, and I talk about that and a lot of things in abstract songwriting terms. Because we did it so quickly, I made it up on the spot.
“I’m quite a truthful and confessional songwriter in that sense, but I try and bury it so it’s not too litigious. You can’t always legally account for everything you’ve done, just for other people involved. It’s about things that probably occurred to me, but you can’t marry it up with all the details.”
Did you set out with any truths that you wanted to tell?
“I deal with a vain micro-politics. I deal with world politics, but in a perversely self-centred way dealing with behaviour, being a man, how bad or good a man is, all in a poetic wash. Whether that’s good or bad I don’t know, but it’s all I can do. It doesn’t centre itself on something you can describe. It’s like 17th Century opiumated nonsense!”
And the sounds are fittingly chaotic to match?
“Well, this is kind of like a dance or electro-clash record. The tempo has gone up a lot, and I wasn’t precious about whether we were using a real drummer all the time or not. We did all these things that I’d have found so offensive a few years ago, when my priorities would have been all about ‘the organic process of recording music properly’. Paul tended to repeat words in a very dance-pop way, and I was so offended by it. ‘You can’t repeat words! I wouldn’t even repeat a chorus!’ Then I surrendered to it and realised the power of it. It’s very instant compared to what I would usually do.”
“His objective was to frame a certain chaos that I have in a more coherent way, and it works.”
Did working with Fred Again.. open up new worlds for you?
“In some ways. Playing the Fred Again.. song live made me pause and think, ‘Fuck, people are moving!’ We had a contemplative audience before that, and it was a much more exciting environment to be in when people are jumping about.
“Before, making narrative-based indie music is a bit of a thoughtful thing and that gets a bit tiring. It’s hard to play live when people are listening! You want them to react! Fred Again.. caused a little bit of a shift and I definitely learned a lot about dance music.”
What else are you listening to at the moment?
“I’ve been listening to a lot of dance music. I went through Beatport and listened to loads of ‘90s, ‘00s drug-reference house music. I play it when I DJ. They’re all called like ‘DJ Pineapple’ or I don’t know what the fuck, but they’re all quite offensive songs with cancellable titles…
“In terms of new music, I like Viagra Boys, I love Amyl [& The Sniffers] – there’s something beyond special about her [Amy Taylor, frontwoman]. Her lyrical time is something I’m in admiration of. She’s naturally and absolutely brilliant. She’s my favourite current person. No one gets better than her.”
Baxter Dury releases ‘Allbarone’ on 12 September, 2025, via Heavenly Recordings. Pre-order it here and check out the tracklist below.
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’
Dury will also be touring the UK and Europe in November through to December, with tickets on sale from 10am on Friday May 9 and available here. Check out his full list of 2025 dates below.
JULY
6 – Warwick St Nicholas Park, supporting Elbow, UK
25 – Tramlines, Sheffield, UK
26 – Pop Messe Festival – Brno, CZ
31 – All Together Now, Waterford IE
NOVEMBER
11 – Mandela Hall, Belfast
12 – Vicar Street, Dublin
14 – SWG3 TV Studio, Glasgow
15 – Albert Hall, Manchester
16 – O2 Academy, Leeds
18 – Rock City, Nottingham
19 – Tramshed, Cardiff
21 – The Dome, Brighton
22 – Eventim Apollo, London
23 – O2 Academy, Bristol
25 – AB Brussels, Belgium
26 – L’Aeronef, Lille, France
27 – Kantine – Cologne, DE
28 – Paradiso – Amsterdam, NL
30 – Uebel & Gefaehrlich – Hamburg, DE
DECEMBER
1 – Huxleys – Berlin, DE
2 – Karlstorbahnhof – Heidelberg, DE
4 – La Salle Pleyel – Paris, FR
5 – Rocher de Palmer – Bordeaux, FR
6 – Transbordeur – Lyon, FR
8 – Razzmatazz 2 – Barcelona, ES
9 – Sala But – Madrid, ES
10 – LAV 2 – Lisbon, PT
The post Baxter Dury tells us about teaming up with Paul Epworth for ‘Allbarone’: “I was born into chaos, he framed that” appeared first on NME.
Andrew Trendell
NME
