Happy Soup is the third studio album by the English musician Baxter Dury, released on 15 August 2011 through Regal Recordings. It was produced by Dury and Craig Silvey, with additional production by Cameron Craig.
Dury began recording the album in Ibiza, Spain at Count Brigante's Mountain, continuing in London at The Garden and The Pool and at another studio called The Kilburn Love Cabin. 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) and Floor Show (2005). Before its release, Silvey had also worked on records for bands including Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, and the Horrors. Happy Soup marks Dury's first album on a major record label.
On 1 July 2011, "Claire" was officially released as the album's lead single, following a series of unofficial releases on Dury's MySpace page, first as a demo in 2008 and later with "The Sun" in early 2010. 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 ã1,000 in cash. DIY magazine separately premiered each video chronologically from 26 to 30 September. Following Happy Soup release in August 2011, both "Trellic" and "Isabel" were released as singles on 17 October and 19 December, respectively.
Happy Soup was released on 15 August 2011 through Regal Recordings, roughly six years after his previous album Floor Show (2005). It charted at no. 100 and 89 in Wallonia and France, respectively.
The review aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave Happy Soup a weighted average rating of 7.0 out of 10 from a sample of 14 critical reviews.
Credits adapted from the CD liner notes.
Technical and design