'Don't Stand Me Down' is an interesting album to write about but, to be honest, 1985 was a pretty shitty year and needed a cool album to write about and this filled the breach. My heart lies far more with Dexys' debut from 1980, 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels'. So, if this post ends up being more about that album than 'Don't Stand Me Down', forgive me.
This is basically what I think about Dexys/Dexys Midnight Runners/Kevin Rowland - it's been downhill all the way ... which is not a slur on anything they've done, believe me. There are five recordings I know (there is another Kevin Rowland solo album from the late 80s, 'The Wanderer', which I've never braved) - 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels', Too-Rye-Aye', 'Don't Stand Me Down, the notorious solo album 'My Beauty', then the 2012 Dexys (without Midnight Runners) comeback 'One Day I'm Going to Soar'. Slightly bizarrely, I find 'My Beauty' a more enjoyable listen in all its mentalness than 'One Day I'm Going to Soar', so yes, for me, it's Best to Worst, Start to Finish.
In their own way, all of these albums are things of wonder. I'll touch briefly on 'My Beauty' and 'One Day I'm Going to Soar' which aren't really in the same league as the "classic" Dexys albums. 'My Beauty' which famously sold 175 copies in its first week (bit of an urban myth, probably) and features Kev in a dress on the cover, is a collection of covers like 'You'll Never Walk Alone', 'The Greatest Love of All' and 'Daydream Believer'. It's often close to laughable, but I think has some fabulous moments, like his cover of The Hollies' 'I Can't Tell the Bottom from the Top', so I place it marginally above 'One Day I'm Going to Soar'. Don't get me wrong, it was a great attempt at a comeback, it was wonderful to hear new Dexys stuff and I do enjoy it, but perhaps it was too knowing, too stagey, perhaps it just didn't take the elements of original Dexys I wish it had.
In that sense, its closest forebear is 'Don't Stand Me Down', all theatricality, wry spoken word, storytelling. If that's some people's favourite Dexys, that's fine with me, but it's not quite mine.
For quite a while, I placed the underrated 'Too-Rye-Aye' as my favourite Dexys album, dwarfed as it is by finishing with one of the most recognised/reviled songs in the Western (wedding) world.
Closing that album, 'Come On Eileen' remains a great song. Anywhere else, I'm as sick of it as everyone else.
But what other wonders that album possesses! Three of their greatest songs - 'Let's Make It Precious', 'Plan B' and 'Until I Believe In My Soul' which is frankly one of the maddest, most moving, most powerful songs I've ever known. I'll touch on it more later in comparison to a song on 'Don't Stand Me Down'.
And the rest of the album's real good too, but I do now bow entirely to the mastery of 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels'. It's one of my favourite albums ever, it's one of the greatest albums ever. If you don't know it, if you only know Dexys from 'Come On Eileen', you will not believe how good it is.
It's perfect in concept, in style, in packaging, in myth, in sound, in song. Look, I'm going to say it, I think it's one of the three best British albums of all time, along with 'Revolver' and 'London Calling' (released six months earlier). Perhaps it's more perfect than both those albums, perhaps more influential (or at least on the zeitgeist) than 'London Calling'.
It outpunked punk, it stomped on his weakass contemporaries, it pre-empted the soul(ish) music that was all over British music in the early 80s, it mocked, it worshipped, and it is, all the way through, really and truly about something.
It is a Celtic soul album, not quite in the same way as 'Too Rye Aye' which bravely tries to incorporate Irish sounds with soul sounds, while 'Searching ...' is musically much more of a straight soul sound, full of moody or triumphant brass.
And the songs, the songs are faultless, from 'Burn it Down' (I've already written a lot of what I'd like to say in the post I wrote on that) through 'Tell Me When My Light Turns Green', 'Keep It', 'I Couldn't Help It If I Tried' the marvellous 'Geno' to 'There There My Dear'.
It's unified in sound, it does not let up in its excellence, it ends with Kevin quietly singing 'Everything I do will be funky from now on' ...
Not quite true, there's not much funky in 'Don't Stand Me Down'. There's a whole lot more waltz.
It was a commercial failure on release and has since been reclaimed as a lost classic. Maybe. Kind of.
First of all, the cover I've put for it is for the version I own, the 2001 remastered version - besides any sonic differences, there are two other main differences which make the remastered version better than the original.
1. There's an extra song, indeed, an album opener, called 'Kevin Rowland's 13th time', which I think does a great job of setting up the album.
2. The song 'Knowledge of Beauty' has the new title 'My National Pride'. Rowland explains in the sleevenotes how much he wishes he's given the album that title originally, but he was afraid to be so nakedly patriotic.
'My National Pride' is probably my favourite song on the album. It's a song that consistently gives me the real physical goosebumps as it builds to that final 'My national pride is a personal pride, where I come from ...". It's one for the Irish diaspora and no mistake.
Really, for me, 'Don't Stand Me Down' is an album of great moments, without being a great album. The great moments are dotted all the way through, but I do think the it's top heavy and the second half is a let-down.
'One of Those Things' and 'Reminisce Part 2' feel a bit lightweight to me, 'I Love You (Listen To This)' is great but not quite the monstrous hit one would hope, and 'The Waltz' is fine but goes on a bit.
Talking of going on a bit, perhaps the album's greatness stands or falls by how much you rate the album's centrepiece, 'This is What She's Like', all 12 mins 23 seconds of it.
I've seen Dexys twice (in their 2003 and 2012 comebacks) and to me, 'This is What She's Like' is rather like when Dylan plays 'Desolation Row' ... well, ok, but this is 12 minutes of good gig time you're taking up with this when you could be playing three songs I really really love instead.
'Until I Believe in My Soul' is an epic half the length from the previous album, but twice the song for me, more moving, funnier, more definitive, more everything.
'This is What She's Like' is funny, yes, very funny. How tremendous that deadpan preamble with Billy Adams is, and the digs at the dull hipsters of the day. That bit about the Italian for thunderbolt (fulmine, by the way), absolutely awesome. And when he sings, just sings, wordlessly, it's almost as great as he hopes it might be. But not quite. Not quite.
So there, I don't think 'Don't Stand Me Down' is a classic album because I don't think 'This is What She's Like' or 'I Love you (Listen to This)' are quite as good as Kevin Rowland thinks they are.
I admire the uniqueness of the preppy style but I'll take the New York docker look of 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels' every time. I wish there were more songs, and at least two of them weren't throwaway. I like the theatricality but I prefer great song after great song.
It's a wonderful oddity but I think people are kidding themselves if they think its Dexys' best album. Which doesn't mean it's not one of the best albums of 1985.
Here's my Dexys/Kevin compilation. Really, they're not a Greatest Hits band though. They're an albums band. There are four and they're all unique and best listened to as a whole and marvellous in their own way. Especially 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels'. Own it.
Burn it Down
Let's Make This Precious
I Love You (Listen To This)
I Couldn't Help It If I Tried
Geno
My National Pride
I'm Always Going to Love You
Plan B
Come on Eileen
Until I Believe In My Soul
This is What She's Like
The Occasional Flicker
Love Part One/Love Part Two
Tell Me When My Light Turns Green
Manhood
There There My Dear
Maybe you should welcome the new soul vision, welcome the new soul vision, welcome the new soul vision ...
"I don't think 'This is What She's Like' or 'I Love you (Listen to This)' are quite as good as Kevin Rowland thinks they are."
ReplyDeleteWhen you're right, you're right.
Out of curiosity, what else did you consider for 1985? Prefab Sprout, perhaps? Billy Joel's Greatest Hits collection? A-Ha?
Do you know, A-Ha's 'Hunting High and Low' would have been a great option, as my sister had it and I knew it inside out. In fact, it was probably the first pop album I really knew well. It's really good, not just the singles but all the way through. Oh well, opportunity gone
ReplyDelete