11th July - Dexys Midnight Runners' Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

Artist – Album: Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

Released: 11^th July 1980

Sounds Like: Welcome to the new soul vision

In the grand ol’ US of A, Dexys are seen as one of many quirky one-hit-wonderers from the Eighties, placed in the same bracket as Men Without Hats, Men at Work and countless other bands that start with the word Men. There they found flash in the pan success in 1984 with the raggle taggle hoedown of ‘Come on Eileen’, a stalwart of karaokes and wedding parties ever since. Over here though, we know better. We’ve suffered frontman Kevin Rowland’s egotistical lunacy for many years, frequent changes of genres and even more frequent changes of line-up, breakup and the long-awaited reunion. We put up with it though, because each of their four albums have been excellent. The best of the lot is this, 1980’s Searching for the Young Soul Rebels.

Fusing Northern soul with rock and pop, the album delivers both stomping, brassy classics and downbeat jazzy tracks with similar aplomb. ‘Geno’ and ‘Tell Me When My Light Turns Green’ are all simply fantastic upbeat soul, whilst ‘I’m Just Looking’ and ‘Keep It’ smolder or fester under a smoky jazz club background. Meanwhile the high pitched disco of ‘Thankfully Not Living in Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply’ has the rushed rock-disco feel of songs from the new millennium and ‘Seven Days Too Long’ is a great Northern soul cover. Rowland’s lyrics are top notch too, as countless issues stoke up his ire – modern persecution of the Irish in ‘Burn It Down’ or his distaste with the ignorant music scene in ‘There, There, My Dear.’ Each and every song is great (with the possible exception of the spoken word mopiness of ‘Love Part One’)

The album starts by flicking through various radio shows, where we hear snippets of Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’, The Sex Pistols’ ‘Holidays in the Sun’ and The Specials’ ‘Rat Race’, clearly representing the UK's three major rock movements of the half decade or so previous to this albums release. Dexy’s new soul vision may not have kicked off the next musical epoch, but they had a damn good stab at it.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Burn It Down – 4:21

2.       Tell Me When My Light Turns Green – 3:46

3.       The Teams That Meet in Caffs – 4:08

4.       I’m Just Looking – 4:41

5.       Geno – 3:31

6.       Seven Days Too Long – 2:43

7.       I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried – 4:14

8.       Thankfully Not Living in Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply – 2:59

9.       Keep It – 3:59

10.   Love Part One – 1:12

11.   There, There, My Dear – 3:31

Listen to ‘There, There, My Dear’:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZwWnXuB_eg