Searching For the Young Soul rebels

Dexy’s Midnight Runners

EMI records, 1980

Yes, the group who gave us “Come On Eileen,” which despite its kitschy appeal as an ’80s party favorite is actually a cracking good tune. It’s unfortunate that most people aren’t familiar with Dexy’s timeless pre-”Eileen” debut, a powerful 11-track dose of Celtic Soul. Part Stax-era homage (replete with brightly blaring horn choruses) and part pint-smashing, pub-bound hooley, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels also quotes liberally from Van Morrison’s meandering homilies and tears pages from Joe Strummer’s tattered lyric book with equal bravado. Led by the prolific Kevin Rowland, Dexy’s blaze through opener “Burn It Down,” name-checking the likes of Oscar Wilde, Brendan Behan, and Sean O’Casey before setting off on a passionate, purposeful musical journey that sounds just as subversive and literate as it did over 25 years ago. Which isn’t to say that Searching is a mere rock curiosity; while it invariably appears on every critic’s list of “Greatest Albums of All Time,” it still manages to move you in all the right ways with hit “Geno” (a brilliant tribute to forgotten R&B legend Geno Washington), “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green,” “Seven Days Too Long,” and raucous closer “There, There, My Dear.” – T. Bennison