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Today's Shelf Pull: Dexys Midnight Runners, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

A firm backbone, a voice full of nerves

Brass, taut rhythms and a voice that will not settle: Dexys Midnight Runners make Searching for the Young Soul Rebels an album of discipline and exposed nerves.

Dexys Midnight Runners make Searching for the Young Soul Rebels feel less like a statement of taste than a matter requiring immediate attention. The brass is assertive, the rhythm section taut, and the singing refuses to settle politely inside the arrangements.

For today's vinyl shelf pull at Kilmorna in Listowel, that tension is the way into this 1980 album. Soul gives it movement and warmth; post-punk economy keeps the gestures sharp. Nothing needs to sprawl to make its presence felt.

Listen first to the relationship between voice and horns, rather than choosing one to follow. Kevin Rowland sounds exposed even when he sounds combative. The arrangements provide a firm frame, but they do not make the person inside it seem comfortable.

That distinction keeps the record interesting. Forceful singing can sometimes close a song down, leaving the listener with only one possible response. Here, the vulnerability complicates the insistence. You hear determination, but also the effort involved in keeping it upright.

Burn It Down opens the sequence with resistance to easy cultural labels. That stance matters because the music itself draws several strands together: Northern soul, rhythm and blues, and the clipped discipline of punk. It has roots without sounding rooted to the spot.

Tell Me When My Light Turns Green makes a useful next stop for the ear. Notice how urgency depends on ensemble control here. The force comes from parts working together, not from everyone trying to occupy the foreground at once.

The bass and drums give that activity its boundaries, while the organ adds another colour alongside the brass. There is warmth in the combination, but little sense of lounging about. Even the welcome seems to have somewhere else to be.

The horn-led arrangements are not merely a bright border around the songs. They help establish the terms of the exchange with the singer. Listen to that shared space: the voice has something solid to push against, rather than an empty room to fill.

Geno arrives fifth in the eleven-track sequence, and its admiration for Geno Washington becomes part of the album's own self-definition. It is a song about looking towards someone else without surrendering the need to sound like yourself. A useful distinction, and an audible one.

There is more to the running order than keeping that momentum topped up. Instrumental passages and slower stretches change the pressure, giving the singing and brass a different context when the intensity returns. The pacing rewards attention beyond the obvious surge.

By There, There, My Dear at the end, tight ensemble playing again turns urgency into shape. Listen for the difference between emotional unrest and musical disorder. This record makes plenty of room for the first without relying on the second.

Between Geno and that closing track, the sequence includes Seven Days Too Long, I Couldn't Help It If I Tried and Keep It. Love Part One sits immediately before the finale. There is a whole stretch of album here worth resisting the temptation to skip.

The soul influences are not handled like objects behind glass. Their rhythmic pull and emotional openness remain useful tools, put to work alongside a more economical, restless approach. Respect for an older musical language need not mean speaking it quietly.

What stays with you is the friction between a disciplined group sound and a voice that will not tidy itself away. Neither side cancels the other. The music needs both its backbone and its nerves.

That makes this a rewarding album to follow from beginning to end, rather than approaching it as a setting for Geno. The changes of pace are part of the argument, not interruptions to the business.

For a shelf pull, the recommendation is simple: give the whole sequence your attention. Let the horns draw you in, then notice what the rhythm section holds steady and what the voice leaves unsettled.

On the shelf today:

Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

LP, 1980

Soul / Funk

EUR 16.50

Available from The Kilmorna Collection, Listowel

Buy or reserve: https://www.thekilmornacollection.com/vinyl/dexys-midnight-runners-searching-for-the-young-soul-rebels

Buying vinyl records in Ireland: https://www.thekilmornacollection.com/vinyl-records-ireland

On the shelf today

Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

LP / Soul / Funk / 1980

EUR16.50 / Available now

Order / Reserve