On my way to meet a friend in a Dame Street pub a couple of hundred yards past Dublin’s Olympia Theatre where Monday night’s Dexys gig was taking place, who should be coming the other way but the COEHM himself. Conservatively dressed by his dandyish standards, Mr. R’s most flamboyant piece of schmutter is an impressively hirsute Faux fur coat whose like I have only ever seen twice before. (On Mike Winters in Coventry Precinct in and Lionel Blair in Hull Uni Students’ Union more than 40 years ago in case you’re asking.)
Resisting the urge to stop our Kev and ask him exactly how many Faux had to die to make said outerwear, I give him a knowing smile and respectful nod of the head which he graciously returns before continuing on his way.
A couple of hours later, the voluminous fur coat has joined the longshoreman beany and donkey jacket of the Geno Years, the early-80s raggle-taggle dungarees and that frock from the Reading Festival in the storeroom of Mr Benn’s local fancy dress emporium. Tonight, Kev hits the stage wearing a bum-freezer red jacket, capacious matching trews and a striped Breton T-shirt. All topped off with a darling little midshipman’s cap. One can’t help but think that anyone having the temerity to shout out “Bonjour, matelot!” to the Rowland of the early- to mid-1980s would get taken round the back and given a good kicking. Having famously located his feminine side of late, New Improved Kev would be more likely to pour you a cup of calming Chamomile tea and sit you down for a chat.
At 8.10 pm, Dexys hit the stage and kick off with a run through of their latest, frankly rather hit and miss album, Feminine Divine. Like the quality of the FB songs themselves, the audience’s reception diminishes over the course of the first half of the show’s 45-minute run. While earlier tracks like I’m Coming Home are received rapturously, the approbation for the lesser songs on the album’s second side is somewhat more muted. A less uncompromising artist might have settled for concluding this part of the show with the magnificent My Submission – up there with Too Rye Aye’s Old and Don’t Stand Me Down’s The Waltz (neither performed tonight) as amongst the best ballads KR has ever written. Instead, the early part of the evening fizzles out with Dance With Me, a song so aimless and forgettable it could have come off his 1988 solo debut, The Wanderer. Still, given that it’s some 43 years since I last saw the band, he and they deserve a pass on this one.
A 20-minute interval later and the band is back for the bangers that are, one suspects, the key reason why the bulk of tonight’s almost capacity crowd is here. With the guilt, hate and pride Rowland sings about in part one’s I’m Going to Get Free having pretty much extinguished themeslves with 1986’s peerless DSM, Rowland is obviously a lot more comfortable in his skin than he used to be in his Dexys Midnight Runner days.
The chippiness of youth having made way for the bittersweet wisdom that comes with age, the show’s second section ends up being far more celebratory than confrontational and is all the better for it. During tours for DSM, the singer apparently rejected yells for his first big hit by saying “Geno don’t live here no more”. Like the band’s other best sellers, Eileen and Jackie, Geno is performed and received with the love it merits. Starting off with Soon/Plan B and culminating with a moving reading of Carrickfergus that beats the bloodless version on Dexys’ underwhelming covers album from a few years back, the set is uniformly excellent. Only minor quibble would be that, given KR’s Mayo roots, a couple of his more Irish songs such as Burn It Down or Knowledge of Beauty would surely have capped proceedings off perfectly.
While KR has recently hinted that he might finally go through with the retirement he started talking about around the time of the aforementioned covers album, on this showing he and his band have every reason to reward us all with One Last Wild Waltz.
SETLIST (from Setlist FM)
FIRST SET
1. The One That Loves You
2. It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023)
3. I’m Going To Get Free
4. Coming Home
Act Two: Attitude To Women
5. The Feminine Divine
Act Three: The Relationship
6. My Goddess Is
7. Goddess Rules
8. My Submission
9. Dance With Me
SECOND SET
10. Soon
11. Plan B
12. All in All (This One Last Wild Waltz)
13. Until I Believe in My Soul
14. Free
15. Come on Eileen
ENCORE
16. Geno
17. Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)
18. Tell Me When My Light Turns Green
19. Carrickfergus
Good review @Jaygee. Kevin Rowland genius or idiot savant?
@Jaygee I was at the Palladium gig – same setlist same outfit. They were magnificent even the first set and My Submission is the best thing he has ever done.
Nice one, @jaygee. I agree with all of that but I’d go further and say it wasn’t just on Carrickfergus – Kev’s singing was much better on all of the Dexys-era stuff than on the record (that weird wobbly tick he’s acquired in the studio was gone too). Quite a treat to hear a senior performer in such fine voice.
The dungarees and frock might be back with Mr Benn’s shopkeeper but they still made it into the onscreen “ChangesBowie”-style montage, alongside a lingering shot of Jocky Wilson (apparently) in the bath, confirming your thesis that KR has loosened up somewhat from his more intense younger days.
People might be interested to know that the new band are no longer in uniform and their dress, like the furniture in Frasier’s apartment, might be described as “eclectic”. The onstage bants with the supporting cast, familiar from previous incarnations, is present and correct (still getting value from those acting lessons 40 years back!), the choice “ad lib” being on Free “You mean like John Inman?”
(Rest assured, the gag was not lost on the demographic in attendance).
Two more things: PlanB, as on Too Rye Ay, ran very pleasingly through into I’ll Show You
and
If you’re the bloke I biffed in the face with the bathroom door, I apologise once more..
@Sewer-Robot
It wasn’t me who got biffed with the bathroom door, S, so no worries
on that front!
Are you based in Dublin or do you just get up for the odd show?
FWIW, I’m in Roscommon and go up about once a month for gigs so if you fancy some pre-gig pints one night drop me a PM.
Not too many shows for the rest of the year – just The Waterboys in Galway on Fri Nov 3, but have got tickets for Lambchop in Jan and Lucinda W in Feb.
Oddly enough as I was leaving I distinctly heard two American guys a couple of rows ahead of me saying “They really should record some of that newer stuff they did at the end”
@jaygee
Yes, I’m in Dublin and I must say I don’t envy you that jaunt down every time you want to see someone.
Thanks for the offer but, shamefully for an AWer, I do very few gigs (this was my first for four years and not necessarily because of Covid).
Also, although I might come across as the very epitome of eloquence, wit and good humour on here, in real life I’m a bit unsociable, I’m afraid.
But I look forward to read your reviews of your upcoming gigs..
Nice review, @Jaygee . Looking forward to your Waterboys missive.
I’ll be ‘up’ in Dublin and at The Olympia myself end of next week (8th) for Lloyd Cole. If either or both of you will be there let me know…I might be driving so no pints for me but maybe a burger and a chat…
Sadly not for that one, J. Next one in Dublin not til Lambchop’s Kurt W does a solo show at the NCH In late Jan and then Lucinda W at the Olympia next Feb.
Not sure if either of you like Chris Stapleton, but tickets for his October date next year go on sale tomorrow am
I quite like Chris Stapleton but paying college fees for the youngest this month so seriously curtailed for a while. I’ll take a look at that in a few weeks – maybe Lucinda as well as there seems to be tickets available still…not sure about Lambchop – I have Nixon and it’s very good but not sure I would know enough of his back catalogue for a solo gig. Take Care, J.
I saw the Waterboys in August, and I think you’re in for a treat. They’re a full on rock band at the moment, made me think of Crazy Horse several times. There was a wobble early on when the frankly annoying Brother Paul was allowed to perform a keytar solo, but once he was back on the leash it was a really excellent show, one which made me think Long Strange Golden Road, off 2015’s previously unheard by me Modern Blues, is one of the very best songs Mike Scott’s ever written.
@kid-dynamite I agree re Long Strange Golden road – only saw them do it when they were touring Modern Blues so if they are doing on this tour I will be happy – seeing them in Brum in a couple of weeks.
Would love to see them do Red Army Blues – have seen them close to twenty times and only saw them do that once
For those AWers still interested in Dexys, here is some footage of Kev serenading
the Dublin crowd from the Olympia balcony at the start of the second half of Monday’s show*
* Not taken by me
That’s really good and, not for the first time, makes me wish I’d got off my arse and gone. Oh well.
I went to the Brighton leg of the tour and share your observation, Jaygee, that the latter part of the first half ( The Feminine Divine performed in full ) felt under cooked. The My Goddess Is and Goddess Rules sequence in particular had me and several of the people around me shifting nervously in embarrassed discomfort. But, fair play to Kev, he is never anything less than committed. The rest of the gig was cracking and he is in really good voice at the mo.
I was about to post pretty much exactly this. I was at Brighton too, and there really was a sense of cringe/discomfort during those songs and the dialogue that was along the lines of ‘I mistreated women in the past, but now I’ve realised I have to completely worship them and be really grateful if they come back home to me after they’ve been carrying on with other men’
t’s an odd act of over-compensation, to my mind. I’m grateful to my own, er, goddess, that she found it equally questionable. Her take being, when men realise they’ve treated women like shit for years, the best recalibration is not to now submissively treat them as goddesses, but to start treating them as, you know, equals.
Admittedly that hot take might not result in much of a concept album.