Top 102 Albums⁺ No 5 Searching for the Young Soul Rebels/Don't Stand me Down

Top 102 Albums⁺ No 5 
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels/Don't Stand Me Down - Dexy's Midnight Runners

I struggled for a while to choose between Searching for the Young Soul Rebels and Don't Stand Me Down. Why struggle, I thought. There's room on this horse for two.

The way that Dexy's moved between styles, musical and sartorial, on their first three albums means that they almost seem like different bands anyway. Were these changes driven by a passion for renewal or were they simply lurches? No band has displayed the tension between an intensely passionate focus and a kind of wild vulnerability more than Dexy's, or more to the point singer and (lightning) conductor Kevin Rowland.

Dexys (after 25 years)

Nowhere is Home
A preview track from the forthcoming Dexys album. (They've dropped the Midnight Runners)

Starting off with an affected voice Kevin excavates his identity, crossing terrain familiar from Sean Campbell's Irish Blood, English Heart.

A singer searching for a voice.

Irish Blood, English Heart

Irish Blood, English Heart - Sean Campbell

This books tells a story that has long fascinated me, the story of how the children of Irish emigrants to England became some of the most important musicians in English rock music. It focuses on the eighties, interrogating the stories of Kevin Rowland (Dexy's Midnight Runners), Shane McGowan (The Pogues) and Morrissey and Marr (The Smiths).