1001 Albums You Must Die Before You Die: 460. Dexys Midnight Runners – Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (1980)

 

On the basis of Come On Eileen (which is not on this album) I had the idea that Dexys were Irish – they're not, they’re from Birmingham, although Kevin Rowland does have Irish heritage. The cover for this album shows scenes of Catholics being forcibly rehoused in Belfast – something that has never, ever, worked out well in the entirety of human history, and didn’t this time either. But it didn’t help to dispel my misconception. 

I also loathe Come On Eileen with a passion – not so much the song itself, but just that it gets *so* overplayed, especially by the same wedding DJ types that think Abba’s Dancing Queen is a dance track. Rowland’s strange back-of-the-throat incoherent warblings don’t help either (“Poor old Johnny Ray, selling salad on the radio...”), so it was a sense of trepidation that I approached this album. 

But, actually, it’s pretty good. For one thing, Rowland is a bit less esoteric here, for another on this album they do for Northern Soul what The Specials did for ska. Talking of which, the Specials appear briefly at the start of the album (on Burn It Down) with somebody scanning through radio stations to find something to listen to (also appearing: Deep Purple and The Sex Pistols). The implication here being that: enough of these rockers, let’s have some proper old-school soul. 

The Dexys' take Motown soul and blend it with some post-punk sensibilities. Like The Specials, they even do a cover of their chosen genre, in this case Seven Days Too Long, certainly one of the stronger tracks. There’s some upbeat soul (Burn It Down particularly is a great album opener), and some slower bluesy numbers – I'm Just Looking and I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried, for example. The big single is Geno, a tribute to singer Geno Washington, whose horn riffs you would instantly recognise. Contemporary critics hated it, it did well in the charts, and features a lot of Rowland’s trademark Jackie Wilson style “brrrr” interjections. 

The Teams That Meet In Caffs is an instrumental with some organ and sax soloing (an attempt at some Booker T, perhaps). The wonderfully titled Thankfully Not Living in Yorkshire It Doesn't Apply is a very strange track, sung in an inexplicable falsetto, and a disappointing waste of a good title. Rowlands even drops in a bit of beat poetry in Love Part 1, which raises him towards Bono levels of pretentiousness in my mind. 

A few duds aside, this was a pretty solid album. It didn’t make me love Kevin Rowland, but it did make me appreciate Dexys Midnight Runners more. In editing this I noted that the album doesn't include a possessive apostrophe, and I've spelled the name accordingly. It isn't a person called "Dexy", it's a reference to Dexydrine used by Northern Soul afficionados to stay up all night dancing. Running through Midnight on Dexys, in other words.