Dexys Midnight Runners: Love refuses to say never

Kevin Rowland is not letting go, and that refusal makes Love more interesting than a farewell plaque. The seventh Dexys Midnight Runners album is also the first to carry the full name in more than 40 years; since the 2003 reformation the band has been plain Dexys. Out on September 4, produced by David Holmes, it is a 10-track statement that opens with “My Life In England Pt. 1” at 5:06 and doubles back for “Pt. 2” at 5:55. A frame like that is a man surveying his own ground, not punching out.

What he finds is worth sorting. Rowland, sole remaining original member, says the work is gruelling and “I don't know if I want to carry on doing it,” then edits himself: “No, never say never.” That contrariness is the record’s engine. He restored Midnight Runners because he saw younger listeners who knew “Geno” and “Come On Eileen” but did not connect those songs to this band. Love is his way of drawing the line from those songs to this one. Last year’s memoir “Bless Me Father” warmed him up for public accounting, and David Holmes, who listened to the demos over and over until he knew them inside out, is the right producer for a record that carries so much personal history.

What works is the shape. “You've Got The Love,” “Once A Man and Twice A Child,” “Strange Feelin,” “Old Love” and “It's Over Now” sketch a romantic history, while “I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas” pins it to a calendar. The two-part England piece holds those loves at a distance: place, not just relationships, makes the frame. Returning the full band name is not trivia. It gives Love a cover that settles the confusion and lets the final songs be final, if they are.

The flaw is neatness. Rowland says everything is intuitive and he is not analysing how it will be, yet Love sometimes feels like an analysis created in advance: each feeling titled, each title filed into place. A record this deliberate rarely startles. What would push it from a 4 to a 4.5 is a loose thread no one planned, a gesture that breaks the symmetry. This one is all frame. That is the cost of saying goodbye without quite saying it.

The score is 4 because the stakes are real: a founder bringing back his old name, a memoir behind him, a producer who learned the demos by heart, and an exit he refuses to lock. If the door stays open, so does the record.

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