| Don't Stand Me Down | ||||
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| Studio album by Dexys Midnight Runners | ||||
| Released | September, 1985 | |||
| Recorded | 1985 | |||
| Genre | New Wave/Blue-eyed soul | |||
| Length | 56:59 | |||
| Label | Mercury Records | |||
| Producer | Billy Adams Helen O'Hara Kevin Rowland Alan Winstanley |
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| Dexys Midnight Runners chronology | ||||
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| Alternative cover | ||||
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The 2002 "Director's Cut" reissue
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Don't Stand Me Down is the third studio album by Dexys Midnight Runners, released in September 1985 (see 1985 in music).
Contents |
In an interview with HitQuarters saxophonist Nick Gatfield described the recording as a "long drawn out painful process".[1] It marked a telling and troubling shift from "Too-Rye-Ay", as unlike that record, which was made very inexpensively and "had an energy about it", "Don't Stand Me Down" cost a huge amount of money and, according to Gatfield, "felt uncomfortable and unnatural".[1]
| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [2] |
The album was a commercial failure upon release, in part due to frontman Kevin Rowland's refusal to release a single. Some reviewers were highly critical,[2] with Trouser Press characterizing the release as "a torpid snore that denies entertainment on every level", although writing in the Melody Maker, Colin Irwin described it as "quite the most challenging, absorbing, moving, uplifting and ultimately triumphant album of the year".[3]. The album is now considered something of a lost treasure. It was featured in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, published in 2005 by Cassell Illustrated [1]. Writing for Uncut in 2007, Paul Moody called it a "neglected masterpiece".[4]
The album was digitally remastered and issued on CD by Creation Records in 1997 (CRECD154). Two of the song titles were changed from the original release: Knowledge of Beauty became My National Pride, and Listen to This became I Love You (Listen to This). My National Pride was the original title of the former song, but Rowland "didn't have the courage to title it that when it came around to the artwork." He contributed two pages of sleeve notes, entitled "Foreword to the Second Edition". Two extra tracks were added: Reminisce (Part One), recorded in spring of 1983 and a version of The Way You Look Tonight.
During the mastering process for the Creation release, a stereo enhancer was used, which, Rowland felt, "ruined the dynamics." As a result, a third version of the album was released in 2002, subtitled The Director's Cut. The tracks were again digitally remastered, and the CD featured new artwork, further notes by Rowland, and the additional track "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time". According to Rowland, the album now sounds to him "as it was intended to sound." "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time" had originally been intended to be the opening song (with the introductory lyric, "My name is Kevin Rowland, I'm the leader of the band" and, in a later verse, a "joke" of sorts, to "kick off the proceedings"), but was left off the original issue of the album due to Rowland's perception of a "dodgy drum beat" at one point. Rowland penned two pages of notes relating to the track, as well as a "foreword to The Director's Cut."
A limited-edition version of The Director's Cut had a DVD disc included, featuring videos for the songs "This is What She's Like", "My National Pride", and "I Love You (Listen to This)", directed by Jack Hazan. Rowland penned another page of notes regarding the videos. The booklet shows, in a two-page spread, a photo from the video shoot, with Dexys as an eight-piece band, with Rowland, Adams, and O'Hara in the foreground. (None of the photos in The Director's Cut portray Jimmy Paterson as a member of the band, or show him at all, unlike the cover of the original release.) All three videos feature footage from this set. While "This is What She's Like" includes footage of Rowland and Adams walking the streets of New York City, and "My National Pride" shows the band in pastoral scenes evocative of Ireland, "I Love You (Listen to This)" is shot entirely on this set, dark, with a single spotlight on Rowland, no other band member visible, just various angles on Rowland singing the verses and choruses—the majority of the song—until the final instrumental ride-out, when Billy Adams, Helen O'Hara, and the rest of the musicians are finally seen for a few seconds.
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