Kevin Rowland on MySpace

In 2003 Kevin Rowland put Dexy’s Midnight Runners back again, after a hiatus of nearly twenty years, and toured England.

To many people’s surprise it was not a greatest hits show and nor was it one of the current attempts by faded popstars to provide themselves with a pension fund. (“Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the Human League”) It was instead a triumphant demonstration that those people (including Kevin Rowland) who had claimed Dexy’s were twenty years ahead of their time had, in fact, been right all along.

Now Kevin Rowland has a MySpace account where you can find a demo version of a song, Oh Johanna, from the album the reinvigorated band are working on at the moment. Miraculously this sounds as though it is from the fourth Dexy’s album, by which I mean that it sounds like a logical progression from the work on their third and final album Don’t Stand Me Down.

The “director’s cut” version of Don’t Stand Me Down is possibly one of the best albums of its period, and indeed one of the essential albums from the last twenty five years of popular music. This is not my opinion, it is scientific fact.

Hyperbole? Never heard of it.

On the evidence so far summer 2007 will see a worthy successor. Paint me excited.