Happy Soup

Dury began recording the album in Ibiza, Spain^[2] at Count Brigante's Mountain, continuing in London at The Garden and The Pool and at another studio called The Kilburn Love Cabin.^[3] He had decided to retain Craig Silvey as his producer, whom he had worked with for his first two albums Len Parrot's Memorial Lift (2002)^[4] and Floor Show (2005).^[5] Before its release, Silvey had also worked on records for bands including Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, and the Horrors.^[2] Happy Soup marks Dury's first album on a major record label.^[6]

On 1 July 2011, "Claire" was officially released as the album's lead single,^[7] following a series of unofficial releases on Dury's MySpace page, first as a demo in 2008^[8] and later with "The Sun" in early 2010.^[9] In a collaboration between EMI Records (Regal's then-parent label) and MetFilm School, ten students were chosen to make a video for each of the album's ten tracks with only lyrics as a starting point, and whomever produced Dury's favourite video was to be awarded £1,000 in cash. DIY magazine separately premiered each video chronologically from 26 to 30 September.^[10][11] Following Happy Soup's release in August 2011,^[12] both "Trellic" and "Isabel" were released as singles on 17 October^[10][13] and 19 December,^[14] respectively.

Happy Soup was released on 15 August 2011 through Regal Recordings, roughly six years after his previous album Floor Show (2005).^[12] It charted at no. 100 and 89 in Wallonia and France, respectively.^[15][16]

More information Aggregate scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.0/10[17]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[18]
DIY	[19]
The Guardian	[20]
The Irish Times	[21]
The London Evening Standard	[22]
MusicOMH	[23]
NME	[24]
Record Collector	[25]
The Telegraph	[2]
Uncut	[26]

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The review aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave Happy Soup a weighted average rating of 7.0 out of 10 from a sample of 14 critical reviews.^[17]

Credits adapted from the CD liner notes.^[3]

• Baxter Dury – vocals, keyboards (all tracks); guitar (3)
• Madelaine Hart – backing vocals (1–7), vocals (8–10)
• Mike Moore – lead guitar (1, 3), keyboards (1, 5), glockenspiel (1), guitar (5–7, 10)
• Mark Neary – bass (2, 4–5, 8–10)
• Billy Fuller – bass (1, 3, 6–7)
• Adam Gammage – drums (1, 3, 6–7)
• Damon Reece – drums (2, 8–9)
• Jamie Morrison – drums, percussion (5, 10); glockenspiel, xylophone (10)
• Adrian Utley – rhythm guitar (2), guitar (9)
• Ben Gallagher – rhythm guitar (1)

Technical and design

• Baxter Dury – production
• Craig Silvey – production (except 5, 10), mixing
• Cameron Craig – production (5, 10)
• Count Brigante – engineering (2, 9)
• George Marino – mastering
• Tom Beard – photography
• Alex Cowper – design, art direction