Dexys Midnight Runners enter "final chapter" with new album, LOVE

LOVE will serve as the band's first release under the name Dexys Midnight Runners since their 1985 album, Don’t Stand Me Down, and is noted to potentially mark the final chapter of their long-running musical journey. The new album is a collection of songs which compile stories of singer Kevin Rowland's life, spanning his 2nd-generation Irish childhood and family relationships, late-life romance, loss and reconciliation, with "My Life In England Pt. 1" arriving as the first preview of the work.

"We put out a version of this song on a compilation album in 2003, but I felt we could improve on it," Rowland explains of the track. "I wrote it a long time ago with Jim [Patterson], along with ‘My Life in England Pt. 2’. It’s all memories of my own experiences. Pete, that’s my brother. In my book [Bless Me Father], I changed his name to Pat. There’s quite a lot of overlap with the book in this one. We were in England dreaming of America: it was pre-Beatles, so it was Elvis, it was Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay, clothes, all of it was America."

In the second verse, I’m remembering being in a social club listening to everyone singing 'Kevin Barry' [a song about 18 year-old medical student and IRA soldier Kevin Barry, executed by the British government on 1st November, 1920] and my mum telling me ‘This song’s not allowed in England'," Rowland continues. "It was daytime, and all the curtains were drawn, everyone drinking, singing an illegal song. I remember thinking, Wow, yes, exciting! My childhood memories, I just wrote them down. You can’t really write on behalf of anybody else. Though I realised later that when I was growing up in north-west London, loads of the kids around there were second generation Irish. All obsessed with being up the front with the best clothes, with dancing to the new records."

The single is the introduction to an album which focuses on love of all forms, produced by Belfast musician and DJ David Holmes with additional contributions from Peter Schweir, as well as longtime collaborators Sean Read, Mike Timothy, Jim Paterson and string arranger Brian Irving.

LOVE artwork

LOVE tracklist

"My Life In England Pt. 1"
"You’ve Got The Love"
"Once A Man, Twice a Child"
"You’re Alright"
"I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas"
"I’ll Always Love You"
"Strange Feelin’"
"It’s Over Now"
"Old Love"
"My Life In England Pt. 2"