The latter part of Morrissey’s career has been – for want of a better word – ‘noisy’, in ways that have very little to do with his actual music. Public feuds, political barbs, and endless disputes with labels have often overshadowed the records themselves.
That noise inevitably hangs over his 14th solo album, but once the songs begins it becomes clear that, at least in musical terms, this is one of the better ones.
Produced by Joe Chiccarelli at La Fabrique, the record moves between styles fluidly: flashes of synth-pop sheen; hints of disco rhythm; stretches of mopey, melancholic guitar rock, all delivered with that clear, formidable voice. Whatever else has changed, Morrissey can still carry a melody with that familiar mix of wounded pride and quiet tragedy.
‘You’re Right, It’s Time’ sets the tone with a lovely bass-heavy groove and steady drumbeat, lending it the feeling of a confident curtain-raiser, with Morrissey turning his criticism to screen-addicted modern life and the desire to escape it. The sentiment’s familiar to all of us, of course, but the arrangement keeps it moving, and it’s a chorus that lands well because of his usual conviction.
Then there are the other themes we know him for: alienation, fame, the strange indignity of growing old in public, captured particularly well in ‘The Monsters of Pig Alley’.
Unfortunately not everything lands quite as neatly. ‘Zoom Zoom the Little Boy’, with Jesse Tobias’s sitar playing central to it, starts with a light psychedelic charm but then veers into an oddly childlike catalogue of animals that almost achieves tipping the song into self-parody. It’s moments like this that highlight a problem with Morrissey: stepping out of his thematic comfort zone can often produce repetitive, sometimes annoying results, especially when following tracks snap back to the usual (executed with aplomb) grievances about fame, censorship, or personal slights.
Still though, arrive they do, the reflective moments. ‘Many Icebergs Ago’ drifts through a haze of synths, and the Roxy Music cover ‘Amazona’ adds a nod to his art-rock influences, even if it does strip back the original’s flamboyance.
Taken as a whole, it’s an uneven album, but far from the disaster some other critics have suggested. Morrissey staunchly remains a singular, sometimes exasperating figure, and yet the music here is textured, it’s melodic, and it’s often compelling. For a singer-songwriter more than forty years into his career, that counts for a lot.
