Dexys Midnight Runners: Love album review – A life in song
If Love does turn out to be Kevin Rowland’s farewell album, Neil Cooper rates it a fitting and emotional final chapter in the Dexys Midnight Runners story
Kevin Rowland has never been shy of exposing himself emotionally in song. From early incarnations of Dexys Midnight Runners almost half a century ago, Rowland has driven a restless musical potpourri of Celtic white soul that has veered between euphoric and mournful in its mercurial brilliance. Now here he is with the latest edition of his newly rechristened group, after a decade as just Dexys, with what is hinted as being the grand finale to Rowland’s musical quest.
What we get in this David Holmes-produced affair is a Proustian trawl through Rowland’s personal back pages, awash with purging and redemption. This forms a companion piece of sorts to his candid 2025 memoir, Bless Me Father, and accompanying in-conversation shows.
From the opening remembrance of the dead-end kids he ran with as a Wolverhampton tearaway in ‘My Life In England Pt.1’, Rowland casts himself as an old sage reflecting on his lot by way of well-worn shaggy dog stories of times past. In between comes a resigned acceptance of the present and all the mixed fortunes that have come with it.
So while the Philly strings of ‘You’ve Got The Love’ is a 70s smoocher for traffic light dancefloors, ‘Once A Man And Twice The Child’ finds Rowland saying a moving farewell to a dying parent. The next generation is acknowledged in avuncular fashion on ‘You’re Alright’, in which words of wisdom to his grandkids are set to a Motown-ish backing. If a midlife crisis is on the cards in the gushy love letter of ‘I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas’, drama is never far away, as the cha-cha kiss off after being dumped makes clear on ‘I’ll Always Love You’. The electric piano-led country-tinged plea of ‘Strange Feelin’’ continues the theme, while the northern backbeat of ‘It’s Over Now’ marks acceptance and a reality check as our Kev gets back in the saddle with a swagger.
‘Old Love’ that follows is a last ennui-laden hurrah as Rowland comes to terms with his mortality and reflects on the perils of getting on a bit. He may no longer be the sex god he might have once thought he was, but there’s life in the old dog yet, as the closing ‘My Life In England Pt. 2’s portrait of the artist as a young man testifies to.
There may be no bangers on a par with Dexys’ classics of old here, but that’s ok. This is a widescreen experience with a beginning, middle and end, full of the highs and lows only wisdom and experience bring with them. If Love is indeed Rowland walking off into the sunset at the end of his second act with a final spoken ‘goodnight’, on a record of grand gestures and matinee-idol styling, like all the best love stories, there is always room for a sequel.
Love is released by Heavenly Recordings on Friday 4 September.