The Projected Passion Revue

Widely believed among the faithful to be the band’s greatest line-up, the iteration of Dexys Midnight Runners that came after their 1980 debut Searching For The Young Soul Rebels but before the dungarees and fiddle sporting outfit that made Too-Rye-Ay sadly never recorded an album, instead leaving behind only a smattering of incendiary singles. In 2007 Mercury/Interscope attempted to rectify that with The Projected Passion Revue. Borrowing the title of the band’s 1981 theatre tour, it pulled together said singles, B-sides, BBC sessions and, as its centrepiece, a ten-song concert recorded at London’s Paris Theatre.

The eight-piece band were drilled by frontman Kevin Rowland with an iron discipline (many in the brass section snapped when Rowland tried to get them to learn strings) and as a result they burn with the intense power of a Stax soul revue. Searching… songs sound even tougher, tighter and vital, while the material that would resurface on Too-Rye-Ay a year later such as “Soon/Plan B” and “Until I Believe In My Soul” provide a transcendence to rival Rowland’s beloved Otis Redding or Van Morrison. The recording quality isn’t ideal, but it’s the best document out there of an extraordinary band at the peak of their powers.