Love is out — Dexys work the shops this week

Four days after its release on Heavenly Recordings, Love is already doing the routine work of a new album: sitting in the racks, spinning in shops and drawing the band back onto the high streets. Dexys Midnight Runners released the record on 4 September 2026. It is the first full-length issued under the Dexys Midnight Runners name since Don't Stand Me Down in 1985. David Holmes produced it. The group have described the set as possibly the final chapter in their musical journey. The ten tracks gather autobiographical stories from Kevin Rowland. They take in his second-generation Irish childhood, family relationships, late-life romance, loss and reconciliation. The singles mapped that ground ahead of the release: My Life In England Pt. 1, You've Got The Love, and Once A Man, Twice A Child. Vinyl colours and a week on the road Through the week of release the band have scheduled in-store appearances and stripped-back performances in Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham, Bristol, Brighton and London — a short, close-quarters run that puts the new songs in front of people who already know Geno by heart. The full tracklist is My Life In England Pt. 1, You've Got The Love, Once A Man, Twice A Child, You're Alright, I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas, I'll Always Love You, Strange Feelin', It's Over Now, Old Love and My Life In England Pt. 2. The England pieces open and close the record, giving the middle eight songs a clear frame. Birmingham soul, forty years on Dexys Midnight Runners came out of Birmingham with a soul-inflected pop that cut through the early 1980s. Geno and Come On Eileen both went to No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart; Come On Eileen also reached No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and, with heavy MTV play, tied the band to the Second British Invasion. Six other singles made the UK top 20 in that period. The studio run of the era was Searching for the Young Soul Rebels in 1980, Too Rye Ay in 1982 and Don't Stand Me Down in 1985. Later years brought sessions, live documents and revisits — among them the 2022 reconstruction Too-Rye-Ay (As It Should Have Sounded) and the Old single — but a new studio album under the old full name had not appeared in four decades. That gap is what gives Love its charge. Rowland has long written from the edge of confession and arrangement; Holmes, with his own feel for cinematic soul, is a natural partner for songs that look back on an Irish childhood lived in England. For listeners who have had Come On Eileen on wedding playlists for a generation, the turn toward second-generation memory is not a footnote. It is the record's centre of gravity. Whether this really is the last chapter remains the band's call. What is fixed is simpler. The album is out and the in-store dates move through the UK this week. The singles set the tone — England as place and feeling, love as recovery and risk — and the full set now asks for the whole arc in one sitting.