Dexys: One Day I'm Going to Soar – review

Kevin Rowland hasn't written mere songs for his Dexys comeback; rather a West End musical. To call it a concept album underestimates its high-camp, red-velvet theatricality. The plot: man reflects on youth, and how he was "always dreaming of some way that I could be"; man pants over a beautiful woman; she reciprocates; their love implodes; man concludes, "I can't be what anybody wants me to be." Even if it isn't autobiography, the man's heart-on-sleeve individualism and resistance of any attempt to "overpigeonary" him are pure Rowland. The music is recognisably Dexys, endlessly quoting from 1960s soul and pop songs, but it's also perfunctory, happy to mooch along aimlessly beneath Rowland's monologues. Which are laugh-out-loud preposterous, mostly – but so defiantly idiosyncratic that you can't help admiring him.