“We’ll make soulful music,” promised Dexys Midnight Runners
THE Dexys Midnight Runners They enjoyed a period of significant success in the early 1980s with a couple of singles reaching the top of the British charts (“Geno” And “Come on Eileen”), then the difficult relationships between the members of the group and its leader, Kevin Rowland – which today turns 71 – led to the band’s dissolution in 1985. The band returned 27 years later with a new album, “One Day I’m Going to Soar”and with a new name, Dexys. The following is the review of the group’s comeback album that he wrote for us Alfredo Martian.
Paean in England, lukewarm reception in Italy. The English Channel is the watershed in the judgments that rain down on the sensational return of Dexys (no longer Midnight Runners), twenty-seven years after that “Don’t stand me down” that – undeservedly – sunk a career that started with a bang and two very successful albums. The inscrutable Kevin Rowland, crazy as a horse, has since then tried everything to disconcert the public, including that ’99 album of covers served on a cover (him portrayed bare-chested, black panties and suspenders) that has become essential in the lists of the “worst record covers” of all time.
Tormented and obsessively perfectionist, Rowland approached his creature slowly and cautiously – the band reformed for a series of concerts in 2003, while the first seeds of this album were sown five or six years ago – and he arrived at the solution to the puzzle only thanks to the fundamental contribution of Mick Talbot, Dexys from the very beginning before becoming Paul Weller’s sidekick in the Style Council at the time when the Modfather was more likely to frequent Parisian bistros than London pubs.
Like a coach beset by doubts, he once again reshuffled the line-up, even though old acquaintances like trombonist Jim Paterson and bassist Pete Willis remained in place. And he revolutionized the “dress code”, the style of clothing for English gangs, whether mods, rockers or .rude boys is always a second skin and an identity card: away, then, with the gypsy rags of “Too-rye-ay” (at the time when “Come on Eileen” was all the rage in the jukeboxes and the Dexys were even guests at Discoring) and the impeccable, college-style look of “Don’t stand me down”: Kevin, Mick and the others have returned to the 30s and 40s of the last century, berets, sweaters and wide Parisian-style trousers for the men, skirts and femme fatale or Hollywood diva hairstyles for the ladies.
They changed everything so as not to change anything: “We’ll wear big clothes and make music full of soul” was the leader’s promise at the end of the Seventies; and that remained in “One day I’m going to soar”. Rowland’s voice is less sobbing and more controlled than before, but these timeless songs reconnect with the reviled and beautiful “Don’t stand me down”: simple and airy melodies, strings and a lot of piano, while the wind riffs of yesteryear regain the limelight in the more upbeat pieces, “Now”, “Free” and “Incapable of love”, a crackling musical conversation typically Dexys between the leader and the actress/singer Madeleine Hyland. Blue eyed soul, or rather pure Rowland-brand Celtic soul, which still winks at Marvin Gaye (explicitly cited), the Philly Sound and Van Morrison with seasoned and apparently “live” sounds.
Thus the plot of an album is constructed that unfolds like a coming-of-age novel, a chronological succession of childhood memories, love memories, broken projects and dreams between reality and fiction, confessional autobiography and theatrical representation. A story that would end on the melancholic and nihilistic tones of “It’s ok John Joe”, soft, nostalgic and introduced (another trademark) by Rowland’s speech, were it not for the reprise of “Free” that lifts the soul and morale in the Cesarini zone because, even if the protagonist declares himself incapable of loving and does not feel at home anywhere, he trusts one day to be able to take flight.
It’s a smooth, at times gripping and seamless narrative, from the retro opening and syncopated bass of “Now” to the romantic-cinematographic delicacies of “Lost” (a triplet in which Blur’s Alex James also had a hand) and “She Got a Wiggle”, the first single with the very high drums in the mix marking the rhythm.
Rowland loves to take his time, stretching his pop songs over six or seven minutes, especially when he gives vent to emphasis and theatricality (“I’m thinking of you”, a slow song with a voluptuous sax solo) or brings out his gigonesque side (“I’m always going to love you” skirts the disco of the Seventies, in the background to another dialogue between the male and female protagonists); Talbot, meanwhile, dusts off the bossa jazz and new cool atmospheres of the Style Council in “Me”, while in the credits of the disconsolate and melodious “Nowhere is home” even the name of the ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock appears, who we didn’t imagine to be so sentimental. Slow pieces alternate with fast pieces, like in an old English dance hall, and you don’t have to be British to be pulled onto the dance floor: in “One day I’m going to soar” Rowland sings with all the passion he is capable of, dancing clinging to the sounds and dreams of his youth.
