a b Ewing, Tom (22 October 2010). "Dexys Midnight Runners: Searching for the Young Soul Rebels [30th Anniversary Edition]". Pitchfork . Retrieved 6 September 2012.

a b c d e f g h i j Reynolds, Simon (2005) Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984, Faber & Faber, ISBN 0-571-21570-X, p. 293–296

Release

It was also notable for the use of an impactful cover image which features a photograph of a ruffled 13-year-old Irish Catholic boy carrying his belongings after being urgently forced from his home in Belfast due to the introduction of internment in 1971. Hepworth, David (24 July – 6 August 1980). "Dexys Midnight Runners: Searching for the Young Soul Rebels". Smash Hits. Vol.2, no.15. p.29. Curran, Shaun (21 July 2023). "The Feminine Divine: Dexys". Record Collector . Retrieved 1 August 2023.

Michaels, Sean (13 February 2012). "Dexys Midnight Runners to release first new album in 27 years". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 April 2019 . Retrieved 17 April 2014. Happy Birthday: Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama". Rhino Records. Archived from the original on 16 February 2016 . Retrieved 12 February 2016. And what originals they had. With its biographical essay on the sleeve (“The firm was complete, now for the caper”), Searching... was unlike anything that had come before. Producer Pete Wingfield achieved a sound with the three-piece horn section that has never been recreated on vinyl. Close mic'ed and recorded right to the front, they sledgehammered their way into your heart.Things You Didn't Know: "Come On Eileen" By Dexys Midnight Runners". WCBS-FM. 29 March 2013. Archived from the original on 4 February 2016 . Retrieved 12 February 2016. After briefly dabbling with standard new wave attire, arch-conceptualist, control freak and fully trained hairdresser Rowland devised a stylised look for the group. Strictly no long overcoats, post-punk peg trousers and buttoned up shirts here, the first Dexys’ lineup took its sartorial cues straight from Martin Scorsese’s 1973 movie Mean Streets. The band performed two new songs, "Manhood" and "If I Ever", on the UK Channel 4 TV show Saturday Zoo Of course the downside of such well defined group aesthetics and sounds is that one incarnation of the group can overshadow all others. On telling people I know that I was reviewing Dexys several slated them as one-hit wonders (actually two-hit wonders and more if we go beyond mere no.1s) and a certain person called them “those gay village people” (er…I think that’s The Village People). For many people though ‘Come On Eileen’ is just a wedding reception piss-up tune (as opposed to one the greatest singles of all time) and Dexys will always be those guys in daft dungarees, one of whom looked suspiciously like Eidur Gudjohnsen. Rowland's artistic breakthrough came in applying the lessons of punk to the ideal of soul: If soul was a feeling, an inner fire, then the technical limitations of the singer were simply irrelevant. If you believed in yourself, your soul and the purity of your self-expression, you were a soul singer no matter how gulping and agonised your actual voice was. But did he believe in himself? Too contrarian to sing much about politics, Dexys were nonetheless an ideal band for a moment in which every aesthetic and lifestyle decision felt intensely political. Songs like "There, There, My Dear" lashed out at others for compromise and fakery, but Rowland was his own harshest critic. His ascetic self-doubt and self-scrutiny powered the band's career. This version of Dexys broke up after falling out over the release of "Keep It Pt. II" as a single-- four minutes of choked, howling self-flagellation from Rowland whose subtitle, "Inferiority Pt. I", says it all.