Send "Dexys Midnight Runners " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
![Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching for the Young Soul Rebels [30th Anniversary Edition] review](http://www.sweetslyrics.com/poze/searchingfortheyoungsoulrebels200.jpg) In their half-decade lifespan Dexys Midnight Runners went through at least four distinct versions, each forged then broken on the ferocious, perfectionist willpower of leader Kevin Rowland. When the version of the band that made debut album Searching for the Young Soul Rebels went on the road, they called it the "Intense Emotions" tour, and the music they made together bore that out. This 30th anniversary reissue comes with a bonus disc covering the entire career of that first Dexys incarnation, from debut single "Dance Stance" to "Plan B", the first disc cut by Dexys Mark II. Repeated material from radio sessions means there's a certain amount of fat, especially if you own prior compilations. But if you're new to the band, this is an album that deserves the extended look.Dexys thrived in a period of fierce, tribal pop loyalties by radiating and inspiring passion unusual even for the time. "Dance Stance"-- reprised on the album as "Burn It Down"-- sets out their stall, a brawling kind of soul, the band's thick, brass-driven sound topped by Rowland's combative yelp: "Shut your mouth till you know the truth." Indeed on parts of Searching, Rowland is so passionate he's barely comprehensible-- "Thankfully Not Living in Yorkshire It Doesn't Apply" is high-register babble; on "There, There, My Dear" his determination to prove a point turns the verses into an angry, thrilling tumult of words. Rowland's artistic breakthrough came in applying the lessons of punk to the ideal of soul: If soul was a feeling, an inner fire, then the technical limitations of the singer were simply irrelevant. If you believed in yourself, your soul and the purity of your self-expression, you were a soul singer no matter how gulping and agonised your actual voice was. But did he believe in himself? Too contrarian to sing much about politics, Dexys were nonetheless an ideal band for a moment in which every aesthetic and lifestyle decision felt intensely political. Songs like "There, There, My Dear" lashed out at others for compromise and fakery, but Rowland was his own harshest critic. His ascetic self-doubt and self-scrutiny powered the band's career. This version of Dexys broke up after falling out over the release of "Keep It Pt. II" as a single-- four minutes of choked, howling self-flagellation from Rowland whose subtitle, "Inferiority Pt. I", says it all....full text |
| Thelineofbestfit |
| A soul group with a brass section, and all looking good. We wanted to be a group that looked like something… A formed group, a project, not just random”. The words of Kevin Rowland, ex-punk, who in 1977 left band The Killjoys in a state of despair, pulled from the abyss by soul music and a vision, a search for the young soul rebels. Formed in 1978, his hand-picked group Dexys Midnight Runners were a tight, formidable looking outfit of fighters, dressed firstly in workmen’s clothes before adorning sports attire, the band engaging in physical activities before gigs and rehearsals. Sweating from their exertions, they stood out as a band who were impenetrable to the audience, a gang you could never belong to, with a clear leader who could only be admired for his intimidation of others. This spirit of isolation from popular culture is seen in the opening track on Searching For The Young Soul Rebels, here remastered with a second CD of rarities, sessions and b-sides. ‘Burn It Down’, a re-recorded version of debut single ‘Dance Stance’, opens with the disenchanted search of youth, sweeping the radio airwaves for a new sensation. The history of 70’s music is played as he scours the dial, the Sex Pistols, The Specials; but these do not hold his interest. As he flicks of the radio Rowland proclaims “For God’s sake, burn it down!” and we burst in, the strident brass of a different era matched with swirling Hammond and his unique vocal delivery, incomprehensible and full of intense emotional passion. There is little of their music that fits into the early 80’s, though the album is packed with pop moments, the confrontational sound sweetened with strong hooks and melodies. The interwoven horns and bass of ‘Tell Me When My Light Turns Green’ are a joy, and ‘I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried’ shows a slow and mournful edge, building in bitter intensity through the chorus. Single ‘There There My Dear’ again has an exuberant pace, Rowland’s vocal jammed with rolled rolling r’s amid the yelps and howls. It reaches its peak with ‘Geno’, their first number one single, a tribute to Geno Washington performed in his style. Completely at odds with the new wave moment of the time, it sounded timeless even then. For those like me born in the 70’s, listening to it now provides a feeling of nostalgia so intense I can almost taste the era in which I first heard it, May 1980 somehow implanted back into my mind. As a song, it feels to me as if it has always existed....full text |
| Bbc |
| The first of the three disparate Dexys masterpieces and one of the greatest UK debuts ever, this was – with hindsight – the bridge between punk and new romanticism. Upon its 1980 release it just sounded weird: brazen yet beautiful, both lovingly retro and caustically original. Kevin Rowland had growled in Midlands punk bands but now felt an epiphany. Soul, he decided, was the best way to channel dissent and desire. He recruited musicians who could actually play – and play horns – and layered lyrics over shapes mapped out by Stax and Motown. The pulsating result opened up new rooms in the house of groove, yet it’s Rowland’s persona which dominates. His stressed, committed vocals and tumbling torrents of words remind one how rarely we hear visionary auteurs in pop. Even in 2010, moments here scrape the dust from your ears. (A second disc offers numerous radio sessions and demos.) It just so happens that it’s the least brilliant of the hallowed Dexys triptych, yet Too-Rye-Ay and Don’t Stand Me Down reached giddying zeniths. Rife with "you-talkin’-to-me?" attitude, its chart hits were staccato stomp Geno and the (superior) There, There My Dear, in which Rowland rants at an "anti-fashion" phoney who affects to like Sinatra. (Like many Rowland-isms, this was misunderstood – he loves Sinatra.) Burn It Down (nee Dance Stance) opens with a radio playing snippets of dinosaur rock, punk and even The Specials before it’s flicked off and the horn trio urge you to "welcome the new soul vision". Rowland is in his element railing against perceived sleights: his causes include the Irish, literature and a hunger for R-E-S-P-E-C-T. While the octet’s instrumentals and covers are sharp, the slower, introspective, narcissistic numbers are the bigger clue that here was a major voice. In I’m Just Looking and I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried, Rowland becomes a white existential Otis, chiefly by sheer willpower and self-belief....full text |
Dexys Midnight Runners lyrics
|
| ||||||||||
