The 1980 Listening Post - Dexy's Midnight Runners - Searching for the Young Rebel Souls

 Dexy's Midnight Runners - Searching for the Young Rebel Souls

#283

by Craig Fitzgerald

Dexy’s Midnight Runners

Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

Genre: Northern Soul

Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Rating: 3 out of 5

Highlights:

Burn it Down

Tell Me When My Light Turns Green

The Teams That Met in Caffs

Geno

Seven Days Too Long

Man, when Ol’ Allen handed me this record to review I groaned. 

Like most Americans, the only thing we know about Dexy’s Midnight Runners is the horrid earworm “Come On Eileen,” which for some reason still unfathomable to me 40 FUCKING YEARS LATER was a popular song in 1982.

What wasn’t immediately obvious until I listened to this record was that they started out as a pretty straightforward Northern Soul band. And the “band” part of this band is great. Confident, loud horns and keyboards on every single song. No dumb fiddle nonsense. 

This sounds kind of like what The Commitments would’ve sounded like had they not been (A) fake and (B) Irish and (C) a cover band. 

There are half a dozen upbeat, soul songs on this record I really, really liked, with one exception: Frontman Kevin Rowland’s voice. 

It is horrendous. Jarring. Affected. He’ll tell you as much. “In forming the band Rowland thought it was ‘important to have a vocal style’, he later recalled, ‘and I had the idea of putting that 'crying' voice on.’” Yes. Yes. I see. It’s the worst.

It’s wholly unnecessary, and adds absolutely nothing to these songs. There’s a track near the end of this record called “Love Part One” that’s just Rowland reading a poem, and none of the affectation is there. It’s just his normal voice and it’s approximately 92% less annoying than anything on this album. 

There are good songs on it: “Geno” is a tribute to Geno Washington, the Indiana soul shouter behind Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band; it would be the band’s first #1 single in the UK. The intro “Burn it Down” is a terrific tune, where Rowland’s vocals are as close to restrained as you’ll get here. “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green” would be a fantastic song if somebody else was singing it. “Seven Days Too Long” is a cover of a Northern Soul stomper from Chuck Wood in 1967, which is one of the best tracks on the record. “The Teams that Met In Caffs” is an instrumental, and it’s cool and imposing, showcasing the power of the horn section. 

As it turns out, five of the seven band members quit after this record was released, suggesting that Rowland was a bit of an asshole. The next record was the huge Too-Rye-Ay. Even the goodamn title makes me mad.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5iawHcgRuKL5HMRbigdvWC?si=YwoabXmBQLGc4pMIuPCUOQ