Music blogMorrissey This article is more than 15 years oldMorrissey's Years of Refusal: A first review
This article is more than 15 years oldThe new album undoubtedly has its troughs, but the peaks show off a man at the top of his gameThis lunchtime, Morrissey eyes met mine in the fancy-pants, purple-lit London supper club, The Pigalle, where he met an audience of industry bigwigs and journalists who lie. But why? To introduce to us - and indeed play to us - his new album, Years Of Refusal, which will be released on February 16 next year.
We've already debated what on earth that album art is all about, and Morrissey added to the debate by telling us it wasn't Photoshopped, and that the child on the cover was his own. But what of the music itself? Moz said, with unusual shyness, that he hoped we liked it - before putting his fingers in his ears and running away.
So what did it sound like? On one paltry listen, accompanied by
snacks (sadly not acquired from the Aberdeen Steak House next door), I heard an album bursting at the seams with rocking guitars, ambitious flourishes, and the most lovelorn lyrics Morrissey has written for years. So let's go through them all.
The opening track is the big, gutsy pop song, Something Is Squeezing My Skull, in which our boy claims, rather boldly, that's he's doing "very well", before rambling about diazepam, temazepam, lithium and HRT. Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed follows, a song the handsome devil has already premiered live. Its Mama refrain tilts its quiff towards Bohemian Rhapsody; its rollocking drums recall Nancy and Lee, and the middle-eight is full of sonic weirdness and a sound that suggests an elephant in labour. How lovely.
Track three, Black Cloud, begins with the incredible promise of RaveMoz - imagine it! - with a wash of electronic sound and a female vocal that got me hoping that young Stephen had covered Rozalla's Everybody's Free. Sadly not, although the song that followed was bruisingly good, setting fire to the chord sequence from Bigmouth Strikes Again with a killer bassline. Then followed his next big single, I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris. "Nobody wants my love/You've made yourself very plain", came the sigh of our boy from the speakers, as we all resisted leaping over the spring rolls to give them a hug.
Then, bizarrely, came All You Need Is Me, an old single that has already featured on Morrissey's Greatest Hits album. Did its inclusion here suggest a poverty of ideas? Not judging by the next track on the record, the strangely-titled When Last I Spoke To Carol, which saw Morrissey delving into the sounds of mariachi and Morricone. Any thoughts on which Carol he's banging on about, in a lovelorn fashion, are welcome.
Tracks seven, eight and nine: Another old, tired single, That's How People Grow Up; the ballsy One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell, with guitars that reminded me, oddly enough, of Europe's Final Countdown; and the enervating pomp of It's Not Your Birthday Anymore, which begins with Radiophonic Workshop-style electronics and builds into a chorus the size of Manchester.
Which brings us to the final three. You Were Good In Your Time
is yet another stab at the Ringleaders Of The Tormentors-style
Morrissey doing mortality, but what a stab it is. "Let your heart rest/lay back your head", he croons, reminding us of his career-high album, Vauxhall and I, before the person he is singing to dies, and the eerie sounds of strings and a long-wave radio takes us through the channels into another world. For too long, mind - two minutes of weird noise would have been much more effective cut down to 30 seconds.
But putting a grand statement at this juncture makes the last two tracks oddly low-key - the mundane titles of Sorry Doesn't Help and I'm OK By Myself saying much about their contents, which were plodding and uninspired.
So, on first impressions, a decidedly mixed, but somewhat enviable bag. For when Morrissey pulls out the stops on this album, he's the best he's been for a long time - full of heart, soul and fire.
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