Skip to main content

Dexys

Queens Hall, Edinburgh
5 stars
When Kevin Rowland's latest incarnation of soul brothers and sisters 
appeared live in May, One Day I'm Going To Soar, the first Dexys album 
for twenty-seven years, had yet to be released. Four months on, the 
album's eleven songs played in order sound like a pub theatre musical 
in waiting. Emotional and geographical exile, romantic yearning, 
fear of commitment and sheer hormone-popping lust are all in Rowland's 
loose-knit psycho-drama, pulsed by the music's joyously libidinous 
thrust.

It opens in darkness, with keyboardist Mick Talbot playing an 
after-hours piano motif before the band burst into life and the lights 
go up on Rowland and co sporting various shades of Cotton Club 
depression chic in front of a big red velvet curtain. Rowland 
pimp-rolls the stage in synch with the music, or else sits astride a 
wooden chair for the ballads. For She's Got A Wiggle he and vocal foil 
Pete Williams conspire like the Dead End kids over celluloid images of 
Madeleine Hyland, the Bettie Page-alike singer and actress from 
guerilla performance troupe Factory Theatre, who in the flesh spars 
hammily with Rowland on Incapable of Love. Eventually, on Free, Rowland 
finds the sort of liberation through self-inflicted pain northern soul 
was built on.

But that's just the first act. The second rewinds for a well-worn 
routine with Williams dressed as a copper;  trombonist Big Jim Paterson 
duels with fiddler Lucy Morgan on a glorious Tell Me when My Light 
Turns Green; and an extended Come on Eileen sounds heaven-sent. As 
Hyland sashays back onstage like a classic B-movie diva during an epic 
This Is What She's Like, Rowland may be on his knees, but Dexys return 
is a triumph.


The Herald, September 20th 2012

ends

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more