Having ostensibly retired following 2016’s Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul, following a spell in Thailand reassesssing himself and his beliefs, especially in regard to women, Kevin Rowland returns with DEXY’S and The Feminine Divine (100% Records) as, joined by long-time collaborator Big Jim Paterson on trombone, Sean Read on sax and Toby Chapman on pretty much everything else other than Mike Timothy playing keys on a couple of tracks, they deliver an album that is both familiar and startlingly different.
It opens with The One That Loves You, written with Paterson in 1991 during Rowlands’ cocaine addiction, the words and melody tumbling out in an infectious evocation of 70s soul with a Dexy’s twist and a decided alpha male posturing (“I’m not denying baby, you’re a very strong woman/but you’ll need my love darling cos they’ll be times when you’re just not so sure/A man comes up to you, he says how do you do/But you can tell from the look in his eye that he’s not just the friendly kind, you show that man to me, cos he’s offended me, and I would like to demonstrate to him, black Irish chivalry”.
That stance is, however, immediately offset by It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023), another Paterson co-write and a revision of the track from the 2003 compilation Let’s Make This Precious which opens with a spoken intro as, addressing notions of masculinity, he declares “this is what I really think” before singing “I tried so hard to live a lie pretending I was some tough guy/But now I’ve had enough. /I can’t live that way no more”, a dose of excoriating self-therapy with the backing singers providing the call and response question with lines like “Did that compound your sense of doubt?”
Following the same structure, I’m Going to Get Free with its pounding drums, blaring horns and Woah-ho backing vocals continues the liberation from old ways, declaring “I had so much hate in me/I stopped and I looked and I said to myself/I’m not liking what I see/Now I’m going to get free”. That’s fittingly followed, in turn, with the keys backed Irish soul disco pop, crowd singalong chorus of the ridiculously uplifting ‘Coming Home’, the third Paterson co-write where, the backing singers providing the commentary, he asserts that having “Been tortured by what I tried to be” now “I’m coming home, I want to be myself again”.
Things takes a musical swerve in the second half as the slurring funky title track with its Northern Soul undercurrents and Maddy Read Clarke providing the counterpointing vocals, introduces the synthy electronics and shifts from masculine to feminine, announcing that” Women have been put down for too long and it’s up to you and me”, which some might feel is rather stating the bloody obvious with Kev coming on as some white saviour of womanhood as, repenting his past sexist bullshit behaviour (“Men didn’t know what the fuck to do/so we controlled, we bullied, and we blamed it all on you… today and I know I was the worst …I took out my frustrations on them and them devalued all their worth”), he announces “Women are the superstars, the goddesses on earth / They need to be cherished, worshipped and adored / It’s not for them to do things for us / We’ve got it the wrong way round / We should be serving them for all we’re worth”. The theme and the funk continue with the squelchy My Goddess Is, the spoken lyrics surely channelling Dylan, as we enter the submission phase with the decidedly S&M lines “My Goddess is, glorious and mean, every time she treats me bad, I get even more keen… My Goddess, she tells me I’m her bitch, makes me serve her every need, and scratch her every itch”. It’s on then to the sleazy, sultry Prince-flavoured electro hip hop groove Goddess Rules, the spoken word exchanges between him and co-writer Kamaria Castang a sort of role reversal of those old Barry White numbers.
Photo credit Sandra VijandiThe theme of submission is overtly addressed in the gorgeous six-minute, piano ballad My Submission with its Debussy colourings and Irish soul as, voice soaring to Orbison heavens and one of the best things he’s recorded, he avows “I will dedicate my life to serving you”, though again that S&M streak surfaces in the spoken passage as he says “I will be your pet, to do with as you will”.
It ends with the pulsing late night electronic funk, warm and smoothly sung Dance With Me, a number, which has him adoringly dressing up his woman and asking for one dance so she can go out into the night and express her sexuality (“I’m thinking about you now as somebody holds you tight/Can’t wait to see you again and hear about your night/I hope you’ll take that love, cos it’s your god-given right”) which may be all rather kinky in its implied vicarious thrills but, like its predecessor, also gives the lie to those who’ve ever sneered at his vocals.
Waving a flag for the sensitive woke new man movement may well encourage derision in some quarters, but anyone with an ear will realise this is Rowlands at the peak of his musical powers.
Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and working with Good Neighbours, a Coventry-based charity that supports lonely and isolated older people by linking them with volunteer befrienders, Back in the Day (Tortoise Recordings) is a new EP from Steve Jones aka STYLUSBOY, a collection of songs inspired by six of the older people he met with and the stories of their lives. Featuring harmonies from Mississippi-born Americana songstress Alva Leigh, it opens with the steady chug of ‘Fourteen Days’ which tells of how John, a 102-year-old WWII pilot who was shot down over enemy lines and spent the next fortnight living off the land as he made his escape back to England. The line about The Caterpillar Club is a reference to an informal association of those who have successfully parachuted out of a disabled aircraft.
The war is also the backdrop to the acoustic guitar ringing, chorus friendly ‘Lift Your Voice’, sung in the voice of a woman who worked riveting planes and who, every lunchtime, would, just as she did for her auntie as a child and later for soldiers on leave, exhorted with “come on Joan”, sing to raise everyone’s spirits. Featuring Lauren South on violin, the swaying ‘In The Morning Light’ is about Blossom, who, grafting in the factory, “Pulls out her fight as/The nine to five begins/She works all the hours/Puts bread on the table/Determined to make it/To see through the darkness/And do it all by herself”. Referencing the Coventry Blitz, the melodically circling ‘Waiting To Say Hello’ is a lovely tale of old friends and good neighbours sharing memories (“She takes down the dusty box/Treasures just waiting to be found/The sadness of voices past/Joys of the loves she holds so dear”) and a cup of tea as “We talk and we put the world to rights”. Reminiscent of The Lilac Time, Doreen is the inspiration for the slow balladeering ‘Days Are Made For Living’ with its chiming electric guitar chords, violin and its message to “Take each step as it comes/Look each day in the eye/There’s always beauty in the moments you’ll find”, while the final track, the fingerpicked and puttering percussive beats five-minute ‘Take A Little More Time’ with its Nick Drake hints and harmonies from Sam Lyon, Isabel Costa, Wes Finch and Evie Jones, taps the memories of Freda whose kind-heartedness saw her invited to tea with Queen Elizabeth II. (www.stylusboy.co.uk)
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