This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
A chip off the old Blockhead? Not on your Billericay Dickie, mate. Yes, Baxter Dury is the son of British rapscallion Ian Dury, but he’s hardly following in his father’s footsteps on his gorgeously offbeat debut album.
Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift owes more to the moody trip-hop of Portishead, the lush, downtempo post-psychedelia of Luna, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and the quirky troubadourism of Badly Drawn Boy than it does to his dad’s nudge-nudge new-wave and dirty-dog dance-pop. Wrapped in languid grooves as dark, subdued and enveloping as a sensory deprivation tank, narcoleptic numbers like Beneath The Underdog, Oscar Brown and the Day In The Life-ish title cut are laced with pretty acid-washed melodies, gently burbling synths, behind-the-beat drumming and angelic female vocals to offset Baxter’s oddball tones, which alternate between a romantically wobbly warble, a fragile falsetto and a snot-congested rasp. Dad used to say that sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll are all that everybody needs. Two out of three ain’t bad, wot?
