Dexys Midnight Runners: Love, with the full name restored
Kevin Rowland's seventh Dexys album was made with David Holmes and may be the last. It is about his father, his childhood and late love, said plainly.
BY JOLT Staff · SEP 8 2026 · 4 min readLove arrives with the full name back on it, Dexys Midnight Runners for the first time in more than 40 years. It is a record about a father, a childhood, and a woman Kevin Rowland no longer sees, and he talks about all three with very little armour. Seventh Dexys album, produced by David Holmes, and by Rowland's own account probably the last one.
Rowland has been the constant since 1978, when he and Kevin Archer founded the band in Birmingham and took its name from the amphetamine Northern soul dancers used to stay upright all night. "Geno" and "Come On Eileen" both went to number one in the UK, "Come On Eileen" topped the Hot 100 in the States, and "Jackie Wilson Said" made the top five. Then Don't Stand Me Down in 1985, a split the following year, and a long solo stretch. The return came in 2003, under the shortened name Dexys, with One Day I'm Going to Soar (2012), Let the Record Show (2016) and The Feminine Divine (2023) behind him. He cut the name to stay clear of the eighties revival circuit, and it worked a little too well. The story he tells now is of a woman in her thirties getting ready for Glastonbury, asking what band he was in, hearing "Dexys", and asking whether that was the same as Dexys Midnight Runners. Love is his answer.
“I don't want to be that guy who says he's never coming back and in five years' time comes back. But I've got no ideas or no inspiration for another one, so it kind of is an ending.”
The album is out on Heavenly Recordings on 4 September. Ten tracks, produced by David Holmes, the Belfast DJ and musician who first met Rowland at a party in 2007 and got back in touch a few years ago to start from nothing. Rowland sent him demos, "Once A Man, Twice A Child" among them; Holmes learned them inside out, and brought in a drummer, a bass player and a string arranger. The first single was "My Life In England Pt. 1" in May, a re-recording of a song from a 2003 best-of, which Rowland said they could improve on. "You've Got the Love" followed in July, and "Once a Man, Twice a Child" got a video on 2 September. The band will support it by playing in record shops and signing copies.
Holmes's work is in the keyboards and the strings. "My Life In England Pt. 2" runs on an organ meant to sound like a fairground, a suggestion Holmes made once he understood the song was about childhood. "Once A Man, Twice A Child" leaves a keyboard going after the last vocal line. Both moves keep the music running after the person has stopped talking.
"My Life In England" opens Love and closes it. Pt. 1 is the 2003 song, cut again here. Pt. 2 is the new one, about the childhood itself, and both were written with Jim Paterson, the trombonist from every Dexys record of the first run. Rowland has said the re-recording is no great reinvention. It does not need to be. Opening on the older song and closing on the childhood is a strange and effective way to tell your own story last thing first.
"Once A Man, Twice A Child" is the one people will talk about. It is Rowland and his father, a relationship he had given up on, the stroke that softened the man, the hugs that became possible afterwards, a son putting his dad to bed. He was singing it before Holmes was involved, and Holmes's reply was a text saying it was great and they had to work on it. The love in the title is mostly this: a few good years with a difficult man, and the keyboard staying in the room after he has finished describing them.
The romantic love sits around it, and it is told in credits as much as anything. "You've Got the Love" is the shortest thing here at 3:04, built from ideas Mike Timothy sent over when Rowland asked for them; the lyric came from a woman he was seeing, and he never told her. "You're Alright", another Timothy co-write, follows two tracks later. "I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas", written with Paterson, puts a festive promise in the middle of a record about love in general. "It's Over Now", the Sean Read co-write, and "Old Love" carry the back end out.
This is for anyone who followed Rowland through the reunion records, and anyone who has learned to distrust the word love on a tracklist. It is a writer's record: the words lead and the band makes room. If all you know is "Come On Eileen", start at "Once A Man, Twice A Child" and see how you feel at the end of it.
The one stumble is early. Two Mike Timothy co-writes inside the first four tracks is one too many this close together, and "You're Alright" lands straight after the father song, which is the hardest act on the record to follow. It costs a little momentum.
Love is a four. It earns the number by being specific where it could coast on warmth, and by saying the difficult thing in the room. "Never say never," Rowland told the label when they offered to call it the last one. He has made an ending worth keeping anyway.
