I feel I should mention at this point in proceedings that there has been a ten month gap since I wrote the previous sentence. Given that I was writing about a Dexys release, this delay seems strangely appropriate somehow. At the time I stopped writing I knew exactly what I was planning to say about the next song and all of the others on this album but I'd spent all morning indoors and felt like going out for a while before I completed this review.

The intervening period saw me focus my efforts and attentions on a job I had recently started - only to see that job disappear as several previous jobs have done over the years. It feels as though this should be the point at which I say that this album has helped me through the dark days - that the songs "spoke to me" when I needed to find strength within me. Sadly, that's not what happened - or why I've finally made it back to finish this article.

Yes, I've listened to a lot of music throughout my recent experiences and some of it has "struck a chord" with me.  I've listened to Soul, Rock, Punk, Folk, Funk, Ska, Girl Group Pop, Gospel, Blues... and Gospel-Blues - but hardly any of that music was recorded by any of the artists featured on this site. It is however worth noting that I think the diverse nature of the musical tastes I've ended up with can, at least in part, be attributed to my appreciation of the eclectic styles adopted by Kevin Rowland & Dexys Midnight Runners over the years.

It would be fair to say that I enjoy a lot of the same styles of music as Kevin Rowland does. In some of those cases Rowland's musical choices awoke an interest in genres I didn't even know was asleep inside me. Prior to the release of "The Wanderer" I thought that Doo-Wop meant Darts - or, worse still, Showaddywaddy - and, as such, it held no interest for me. A quick look at the music on my phone's various playlists has just revealed that they include over 900 songs which would fall into the "vocal group" category - and I know that much of that collection stems indirectly from my love of the falsetto backing vocals on "Age Can't Wither You". It would be equally accurate to observe that I have no interest whatsoever in several of the styles embraced by Rowland over the years - a fact which makes reviewing an album of cover versions something of a roller-coaster! To continue where I left off...

"I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen". As a teenager, life often seemed like a series of "battles" with my parents which I had to win in order to progress to the next phase of my development. Getting them to accept that I would no longer answer to the childish name of "Johnny" now that I had started to reach adolescence was one of the first. Making them understand that I'd taken the decision to become a vegetarian was one of those which followed some years later. In between (and throughout my teenage years) my attempts to get my parents - and my mother in particular - to understand and appreciate my daily devotion to Dexys Midnight Runners was a "battle" which never went away. I remember the first time we heard "Come On Eileen" on the radio my mum described it as a "cacophony" - but a few weeks later she informed me that she'd danced and sung along to it at a party she had attended that evening. By the time "Don't Stand Me Down" came out she'd started to come around to my way of thinking and even commented that the introduction to "Knowledge Of Beauty" was one of the most beautiful pieces of music she'd heard. When I first listened to this song I was sad that my mum, born Kathleen Flynn, never got to hear it, having passed away many years previously. This would have been "her song" and the final victory in my "teenage battle". 

The recording itself is one of the high-points on this album for me. A descending arpeggio piano introduction leading into some of Kevin Rowland's finest vocals. I'd always loved the live rendition Dexys gave of "Can't Help Falling In Love" back in 1985 and this is reminiscent of that in many ways. The warmth and tenderness of the vibrato in Rowland's voice on this track reminds me a lot of Elvis Presley who, ironically, recorded his own cover of this song in 1973.

"You Wear It Well". Shortly after the track-listing for this album was announced, I received an email from somebody at the Rod Stewart website "Smiler" asking for any insights into Kevin's decision to record this song. I replied that I thought the idea of Dexys covering "You Wear It Well" was both one of the most interesting yet least surprising of the song choices for this album since it has often been observed that the "sound" on Dexys' 1985 album "Don't Stand Me Down" was heavily influenced by early-Seventies Rod Stewart.  I also sent him a short mix I'd put together of  "You Wear It Well" and "Maggie May" alongside the Dexys song "This Is What She's Like" [see below] which he did agree rather proves the point! 

Ironically - or perhaps inevitably, given that we're dealing with Dexys here - the version of "You Wear It Well" recorded for this album sounds a lot less like Rod Stewart than parts of "Don't Stand Me Down" did! Featuring a more "rocking" guitar sound than has hitherto appeared on any of Kevin Rowland's Dexys recordings, ("You'll Be The One For Me" being the closest comparison) the attempt at inserting a "noisy and crude" guitar solo into this song seems somehow at odds with its smoothly polished production. On paper it looked as though this song could be a perfect match for the Dexys treatment and, though the results are quite listenable, I can't help feeling it doesn't reach the heights I'd anticipated before hearing it. It also suddenly occurs to me as I re-read my comment above that "early Seventies Rod Stewart" has now become an ambiguous phrase - applying equally to the "Maggie May" era as it might to his current activities!

"40 Shades Of Green". There are some artists you're not "allowed" not to love - an appreciation of them is seen as a pre-requisite of calling yourself a true music fan. Johnny Cash falls into this category. Even though some of my earliest musical memories include hearing "A Boy Named Sue"  on his L.P. "Live At San Quentin", I've never developed that love of Johnny Cash which others seemed to have absorbed by some sort of musical osmosis. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the man [in black] - and there are plenty of artists far more deserving of my apathy - but it doesn't help that "Country" is one of those musical genres often championed by Kevin Rowland which I've never been able to connect with. As I listened to earlier versions of the various songs scheduled for release on "Let The Record Show..." this was one of the track selections which worried me the most. As it turned out, I found the released recording far more enjoyable than I'd expected, with more than a few shades (though not quite forty) of the old Dexys song, "Because Of You", including the welcome appearance of Jim Paterson's trombone in the background.

"How Do I Live". Did I just mention that Country is one of my least favourite musical genres? Did I also mention that there are plenty of artists "far more deserving of my apathy" than Johnny Cash? I thought so! It therefore goes without saying that the inclusion of a "Country classic" - previously recorded by LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood - amongst the tracks due for release on a new Dexys album really made me wince. "How Do I Live" is such a clichéd, whiney power ballad at the best of times (and one which I've heard murdered at so many karaoke nights) that I really did fear the worst.  But here's the strange thing - it's one of the few tracks where Kevin Rowland lets the instruments do most of the talking, and his decision to "under-play" his vocals rather than belt out the song, saves this from being the car-crash I'd imagined. In actual fact this has definitely turned out to be one of my favourite recordings on this album - and you've got to love the "How? How? HOW?" interchange between Rowland and Sean Read... a classic Dexys moment!

And so to the song which was always going to be the focal point of this review - whenever I'd finished writing it. The song which somehow represents everything this album is, everything it isn't, everything it might have been and everything it could never have been... and, ultimately, why none of that probably matters.

"Grazing In The Grass". I must confess, I was unaware of this song before I saw it listed amongst the tracks  destined to appear on "Dexys Do Irish And Country Soul". I assumed it must be an old "Irish Lullaby" waxing lyrical about the green pastures of the Emerald Isle - a  song Foster & Allen must surely have performed at some point. When I first heard the version by The Friends Of Distinction from 1969 I was blown away at discovering a song from a genre and era I absolutely love which was completely new to my ears. I was also slightly dubious as to whether this current Dexys line up could do such a song justice. Since Dexys dropped the "Midnight Runners" from their name I have often questioned if this was just a shortening of a name, or an indication that the band had given up on the pace and energy of its earlier years. It struck me that this wasn't a song which would work at "walking pace".

When I finally got my hands on this album I was lucky enough to buy the deluxe edition, complete with DVD and bonus CD featuring "Solo Vocal and instrumental versions". I'm so glad I did as the instrumental version of this track became my favourite Dexys recording I'd heard in over thirty years. A couple of evenings after I'd heard it for the first time I played it on a loop ten times in a row and with each listen it felt even better. I loved the "sound" of this recording as much as I'd loved anything in ages. The drumming was really powerful and suitably funky; the trumpet sounded like it was straight from a Bar-Kays record; Jim Paterson's trombone was finally to the fore once more; the unison punch of the strings on the play-out sounded fresher than anything on "Too-Rye-Ay".

And why am I dwelling so much on the instrumental version? It's certainly nothing to do with the quality of the backing vocals which are really great on this song. I just... don't get it. Why would somebody who is such a perfectionist when making music, who demands that every note is there for a reason, oversee the creation of such a brilliant backing track... only to piss all over it with lead vocals which have virtually no passion or purpose to them. The really frustrating thing is that, as I've already mentioned, Kevin's voice is in great shape elsewhere on this album. There was also an excellent version of "You To Me Are Everything" recorded for the Chris Evans' radio show around the time of this album's release in 2016 and Kevin's vocals on that live recording put this performance to shame. This was definitely not a song suited to the 'not-quite-singing', 'not-quite-talking' style Kevin has come to favour and I can't help feeling that we were robbed of a true Dexys classic in the process.

And so my favourite song on the new Dexys album is one which I rarely listen to in its complete form, a song which has nothing to do with Irish or Country music - but plenty to do with Soul (unlike any of the other songs on the album). It sticks out like a sore thumb yet somehow makes the rest of the album seem out of place. If Dexys can still make a recording which sounds like this - why don't they do it more often?

"The Town I Loved So Well". It is clear from listening to the lyrics of this track that its creator, Phil Coulter is a song-writer of considerable depth and political insight. I therefore find it strangely amusing that this is the same Phil Coulter who gave us such dubious classics as "Congratulations", "Puppet On A String" and The Bay City Rollers' "Shang-A-Lang". This is a song which is clearly more about its words than its music and Dexys version is sensitively performed without being spectacular in an way. Although Coulter became a singer in his own right and performed this song himself, the original - and, in my view, best - version of this song was recorded several years earlier by The Dubliners. Strangely enough, the song which follows this on the album was also written by a famous recording artist whose own version was released some time after the song had been a hit for another singer.

"Both Sides Now". This was another of the Dexys songs I'd heard before the album's release. By the time I did, I was already well-acquainted with Judy Collins' single version and had discovered another cover by Irish group The Johnstons, combining some great vocal harmonies with a guitar riff reminiscent of The Beach Boys "Then I Kissed Her", which was, again, very much to my liking. Whilst I found it ironic that this was the second song I'd heard which had already been covered by the same fairly obscure group - and I was aware that both The Chieftains and Bryan Ferry had also recorded more than one of this album's selections - I must confess that I was conscious to avoid discovering how many of the songs featured had previously been given the Daniel O'Donnell treatment. I fear that information would have an adverse affect on my opinion of the album from which I'd never recover!

It took me a little while to work out what Dexys' version reminded me of - and then I suddenly realised. It wasn't just that the backing track hinted at an old familiar bass line - it was the little snatches of guitar interspersed between the piano chords. It's quite common for artists to borrow from the work of other artists when creating something of their own but I'd suggest it's more rare to find an artist borrowing from their own repertoire while performing somebody else's material! If you haven't worked out what I'm talking about yet, have a listen the short mix below: