★★★★☆
It is no exaggeration to say that Dexys Midnight Runners are by now a true musical institution. The Birmingham band has gone through near-countless iterations and incarnations, with Kevin Rowland steady at the helm. They have explored influences drawn from Irish folk and American blues, experimenting with different sounds without ever losing an identity that was deeply grounded in soul. And it is with a return to soul - indeed, the most straightforward since the band reformed in 2003 - that they now present what may well be the last chapter in their very long story. While the door is not fully closed, the band themselves have noted that this may be their “possibly last ever” album. It is fitting, thus, that the record opens and closes with reminiscence. Two-parter ‘My Life in England’ provides the frame inside which the rest of the record sits, thick with memories that all contributed to the building of the musical voice showcased on the record. That voice, too, is stripped down in a way that lets its most emotional sides shine through.
The record is more ballad-heavy than previous offerings, including its 2023 predecessor, ‘The Feminine Divine’; piano plays an important part, providing almost a backbone that runs through the entire string of ten tracks. While it is not devoid of the genre contamination that has for a long time been a Dexys hallmark, the music comes through as a more straightforward soul, almost nostalgic in its classic trappings and capable of shining through without too many frills. The Irish folk influence, so dominant throughout the band’s history, is still there, of course, but it is the soul element that comes continuously to the front, allowing the record to explore its depth of feeling fully.
The album is simply titled ‘LOVE’, and indeed, albeit in different manners, all the tracks it contains are in their own way love songs. Some are as straight to the point as they are poignant: ‘Old Love’, for instance, is an exploration of how love fares when confronted with age, and the vocals shift accordingly to capture that hint of frailty. Expressiveness was always one of Rowland’s strongest suits, but in this album he is truly a man of many voices. He is suddenly both sharper and smoother on ‘I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas’, a crooning, intense piece that probably comes the closest to the band’s earliest offerings. Other tracks deal with other kinds of love, striking an even deeper chord. It is hard, for instance, not to be moved by the portrait of father-child relationship, and the painful reversal of roles that come with old age and illness, painted in ‘Once A Man, Twice A Child’.
Elsewhere the record includes brighter, more danceable moments. Take ‘You’ve Got the Love’, the second single drawn from the record, which has just an echo of something almost disco-adjacent, nostalgic in a way that is not at all self-satisfied. Perhaps surprisingly, another of the strongest moments of the record is actually a cover: a very interesting take on Tim Buckley’s ‘Strange Feelin’, which takes the original as a springboard and the soft-touch guitars as an assist to deliver a jam-session-like, spur-of-the-moment vocal delivery that is easily one of Rowland’s most impressive virtuoso moments on this album. Like all the best covers, it is not quite the same song as its original counterpart, and it may very well not be saying quite the same thing, and this is exactly what makes it compelling.
If this truly is Dexys’ swan song, it would be hard to imagine one more appropriate. Both a reflection on what has been and a loving representation of what is, it is also, in many ways, a compendium of what Rowland and Dexys do best, boiled down to its fundamental parts and confident enough to shine unimpeded. It is a truly soulful and, perhaps most importantly, joyful record, an exploration of love in all its forms through voice, music and word.
Chiara Strazzulla
Image: ‘LOVE’ Official Album Cover