#18
Alias Morrissey & Marr
I feel such an almighty power as I sit here in my comfortable, well-ventilated room, casting a smug glance back over the fifty decades of music that have gone before me.
Up on my pedestal, I can grimace at the botched attempts of Simply Red to record an album that doesn’t make the listener cringe with embarrassment. I cackle as Joss Stone sets her career on fire with her latest transitional effort.
I can look back over the 1960s with the privilege of being able to pick and choose; scooping up the best of The Beatles, Bob Dylan or The Velvet Underground while turning a blind eye to Pink Floyd for fear of deep comatose. Likewise, with 1970s I can curse the overblown progressive rock of Genesis or Rick Wakeman while indulging in as much David Bowie as my ears will permit. The music of the past affords me the right to select based on my own whims, ficklenesses or prejudices since all the money just goes into already bulging bank accounts.
However, when flicking back through the cultural and musical mores of decades past, the 1980s seems like the war no one talks about anymore. Music, as well as the British Isles, was in a state of turmoil and distress thanks mainly to the Iron Lady, Douglas Hird. Mrs. Thatcher also did some unpleasant things as well. Just joking. She would never hurt a fly. Unless it was a miner. The emergent youth were therefore torn between the new-found political angst of punk and the emergent popularity of the synthesiser as a serious musical instrument, triggered no doubt by Brian Eno. That notorious turnip.
Gloom became a marketable necessity, and myriad groups leaped on the bandwagon. Outfits such as New Order or The Cure gave birth to kind of theatrical gloom which was then pounced upon by successful miserablists like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds or Lloyd Cole. Neither of these bands were a patch, however, on this seminal act The Smiths.
Everyone emerged in such heightened states of distress from the 1980s. As a very young observer, their personalities seemed at times permanently damaged. My cousin Terence, for example began the decade an optimistic socialist fresh from university with a passable 2:1. He then spent the subsequent three years on the dole with his fellow Cambridge graduates eating sandwiches on squeezable cheese in his bedsit in West London, where everyone lived in those days.
He introduced himself to the blossoming socialist activism scene and turned into a fired-up leftie lunatic, hopelessly dreaming of a political utopia that was never going to happen. He then, wisely, turned to The Smiths.
The Smiths derived their power and massive following through tapping into the emotional extremities and difficulties that faced confused adolescents. They were not a band exclusively for isolated, outsider teenagers but leaders Johnny Marr and Steven Morrissey appreciated that pop music was purchased predominantly by this age group; therefore it would make sense to say something truer for a change and to use the pop song as a forum for outspoken, intelligent views on life.
Those were the days. Their debut record, together with the follow-up Meat Is Murder do expressly deal with such topics as repressed adolescent lust, extreme isolation and depression, but this record in particular seems more preoccupied with the process of adult manhood as one of transitional difficulty and impossible frustration.
The Smiths is an overly dramatic, introspective and plaintive record merely since the mindset of its adolescent audience would be too. The tone of the music correlates perfectly with the emotion and sentiments conveyed in the lyrics, which made it such a therapeutic album for many young people and provided such comfort and relief whenever the listeners felt overwhelmed by themselves. It is a record which does not patronise, pander or manipulate the listener. It merely invites them to connect deeply with the music in the hope that in some way it enriches or assists their lives.
Morrissey possessed a voice which captured the frightened child in all of us. No matter how intelligent, poetic or grown-up he sounded, he appreciated that we can never escape the shackles of our childhood; it is a period that imprints itself on all our lives. The pathos here is therefore one of profound sorrow, either at the hand the individual is dealt, and the process of graduating towards adulthood. It is evoked in such a poignant manner at times, that the power of this music is unavoidable and its influence is impenetrable.
The Smiths liberated an entire generation of listeners, allowing them to cope with their personal angst or just providing a voice for those who had been voiceless for too long. For all of Morrissey’s well publicised pessimism, the message they brought was powerful in its humanity.
This record is an astonishing achievement since it communicates the concept that for all the difficulty everyone encounters in life, love is impenetrable and omnipresent in the world no matter what. Yes, exactly what Richard Curtis has been saying for years but without the all-star cast or triteness. Those who listen to this album at face value will no doubt find it a rather miserable journey, but underneath its swirling depression lies an LP more life-affirming than a ditch full of Beach Boys records. No, I am not joking. Curtis made off with all my gags in 1998.
Reel Around The Fountain (5:57)
The Smiths was released in 1984 and conveys more than any other album the extremity and pathos of adolescent yearning. This landmark opener, for all its torch-light melancholy, is a beautiful and elegiac piece of music which proves the Marr and Morrissey relationship was perfection from the get-go. Since the listener is not supposed to disentangle each and every word Morrissey is singing the impression made by this tune is one not just of idle, fatalistic fantasy but of someone, confused, just trying to penetrate the surface of love as a concept.
The lyrics have a confessional intimacy about them, and no doubt whatever is being expressed has been held back for too long a time. Marr manages to keep his acoustic and electric guitar parts rather subdued, allowing instead the steady drumbeat of Mike Joyce and piano/ organ accompaniment from guest player Paul Carrack to help frame the sweeping performance from Morrissey who builds to his moving refrain of: “People see no worth in you, but I do, oh but I do.”
You’ve Got Everything Now (3:59)
A spikier track that highlights more blatantly the rough production values of producer John Porter (recently employed by Morrissey devotee Ryan Adams for his Love Is Hell LP) this track takes us back to some gruesome Manchester playground, or more specifically “the old grey school where I would win and you would loose.”
This track, as deceptively cryptic as the rest of the material, sounds rather like Morrissey just ruminating on his own time at school, where he famously suffered at the hands of a rather disciplinarian regime; expounded further on the controversial The Headmaster Ritual.
The track rings truer to me as another lament to unrequited lust, or an almost masochistic desperation for the teen to be popular, witnessed by his plea to be “tied to the back of your car.” The tune is catchier and more playful, at any rate; the lyrics far too tongue-in-cheek to be digested with the most emotionally wrenching material on the remainder of the album.
Pretty Girls Make Graves (3:43)
One of the many tunes that helped people understand just why Morrissey was so keen to proclaim his celibacy, this is a bouncy little track which shivers with the cold, as though walking us hand-in-hand along this deserted pier as the scene he depicts here unfolds.
The unconventional song-writing technique of Marr is well established by this point in the album, and each tune has such a distinctive sound to it that often his layers of electric guitar which ring over the soft acoustic layers can be overlooked in their subtlety. In this case, the contentious lyrical statements expressed dominate the proceedings as Morrissey croons: “I’m not the man you think I am... I’m Sorrow’s native son.”
The tune explores what happens when attempts to attain this elusive love thing turn stale, and the results in this instance are bitter; rather like being cruelly dumped by someone close to you on a hideously windy afternoon in December. It fades out with an appropriately prolonged phrase, as though the person is disappearing fully from view and life. A very evocative and thought-provoking piece of music.
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (4:37)
A deeply disturbing track, here Morrissey’s introspective croon, the dark bass playing of Andy Rourke and the hypnotic guitars from Marr combine into a captivating tune which makes for compelling if wrenching listen. The emotion evoked here is almost overwhelming as some stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach is deployed over guitars which sway back and forth to create a dark, brooding lullaby. Morrissey croons as though singing a child to sleep, which makes his opening line such an evocative one: “Please don’t cry, for the ghost for the storm outside will not invade this sacred shrine nor infiltrate your mind.”
Whatever this tune is about, I have little idea, but it paints such a distressing portrait of suggested child abuse or potential tragedy in the family that through such elegiac poetry, the tears come in buckets during his final, haunting refrain of: “As long as there’s love, as long as there’s love...”
It depicts a troubled adult, desperate to shield his child from the barbarity of the world outside, and is an immensely powerful tour de force in both lyricism as pure poetry and Marr’s ability to capture the exact mood his vocalist is after. This is an example of The Smiths at their most extreme, but the beauty of this timeless song is undeniable.
Still Ill (3:20)
One of the first overtly political pieces from The Smiths, Morrissey kept his politics close to his chest, but his republican and anti-Thatcherite views correlated with most of the political bands of the era; such as the Pet Shop Boys who Marr would later work with in Electronic. “I decree today that life is simply not giving... England is mine, it owes me a living,” he begins, which still has to be one of the hottest and most contentious opening lines to a pop tune ever penned. Nobody raised hell as eloquently as Steven Patrick Morrissey in his heyday.
This began life as a up-tempo rockabilly shuffle in the vein of Rusholme Ruffians, replete with harmonica intro, which sat unnervingly with the downbeat chord change in the opening verse. This is the finest version when contrasted with the rough cut available on Hatful of Hollow. A softer, melodious tune, here Morrissey makes up for some of the weaker notes in his voice earlier by stretching out his protracted wails with genuine pathos at that gorgeous chorus: “We cannot cling to the old dreams anymore, no we cannot cling to those dreams... am I still ill?” Thank goodness I missed the 1980s. Sheesh.
Suffer Little Children (5:27)
The stink caused by this tune was almost legendary and in retrospect, it is hard to see why. The track was essentially, in my opinion, an attempt to perhaps link the desolation of something as hideous as the Moors Murders into the state of the climate and country of Britain as it existed at the time. Or if not Britain, exclusively the industrial north which had sufficient reason to want to hang its head in shame.
Morrissey felt perhaps that by making use of a contentious subject, he could help bridge some kind of gap between the north and south, and that the former’s perception of Manchester specifically being a repository for squalor and horror would be shattered. The perception had such a knock-on effect on the confidence of the city or its capacity to change that such despair as evoked in the lyrics would be necessary. The hushed, gauzy guitars here are pitch-black, and the tune hardly ends the proceedings on an high note, just with one despairing sentiment: “Oh, Manchester, so much to answer for.”
The Other Songs
Many slate Miserable Lie for its noisome drum beat and the shabby falsetto from Morrissey in the final half, but there is nothing ostensibly wrong with the track at all. It is a petrified-sounding, depressive tune about the extreme fear of accepting sex or love in any guise; trapped desperately inside a mind afraid of intimacy or ravaged by shyness: “I need advice, I need advice – nobody ever looks at me twice!”
This Charming Man is one of the cheeriest and most literate tracks the band ever released, with an agreeably hooky chorus, melody and one of the most famous lyrical snippets from Morrissey which helped make him a superstar in the first place: “Why pamper life’s complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?”
Hand In Glove would appear to be about homosexuality and although it is not the most agreeable tune with its abrasive harmonica section and rather lumbering melody it is perhaps one of the most liberating tracks to come from the pen of Morrissey, whether or not he himself is of that persuasion.
What Difference Does It Make? is incredibly bouncy and the music does verge upon eighties dance almost with its jangling guitars crashing together which had people moving to such bitter sentiments as: “But still, I’d leap in front of a flying bullet for you, so what difference does it make?”
Finally, I Don’t Owe You Anything which is the slowest tune here, and the most musically sparse, but is too prickly and romantic to be overlooked, despite the violence which simmers beneath those small jangled phrases of Marr on guitar. Perhaps one of the most understates Smiths gems, too.
The Smiths released better records than this, but never again did they come packaged in such a raw, awkward and naked form as this. Morrissey sounds as though he just stumbled into the band, his voice still in its nascent stage and the production is some of the grainiest one will ever find on an album of gloomy bedsit music. But, as I mentioned in the introduction, the music is here to liberate, challenge, comfort and be enjoyed.
There was little that The Smiths could not do in the time at the top, and this debut album is a perfect encapsulation of all the emotional honesty and power they managed to articulate in just one half of a tune. Most other bands would kill for just one Smiths moment throughout their entire careers. This is an unflinching, unsentimental and uplifting classic.
Rating: 10/10
Alias Morrissey & Marr
I feel such an almighty power as I sit here in my comfortable, well-ventilated room, casting a smug glance back over the fifty decades of music that have gone before me.
Up on my pedestal, I can grimace at the botched attempts of Simply Red to record an album that doesn’t make the listener cringe with embarrassment. I cackle as Joss Stone sets her career on fire with her latest transitional effort.
I can look back over the 1960s with the privilege of being able to pick and choose; scooping up the best of The Beatles, Bob Dylan or The Velvet Underground while turning a blind eye to Pink Floyd for fear of deep comatose. Likewise, with 1970s I can curse the overblown progressive rock of Genesis or Rick Wakeman while indulging in as much David Bowie as my ears will permit. The music of the past affords me the right to select based on my own whims, ficklenesses or prejudices since all the money just goes into already bulging bank accounts.However, when flicking back through the cultural and musical mores of decades past, the 1980s seems like the war no one talks about anymore. Music, as well as the British Isles, was in a state of turmoil and distress thanks mainly to the Iron Lady, Douglas Hird. Mrs. Thatcher also did some unpleasant things as well. Just joking. She would never hurt a fly. Unless it was a miner. The emergent youth were therefore torn between the new-found political angst of punk and the emergent popularity of the synthesiser as a serious musical instrument, triggered no doubt by Brian Eno. That notorious turnip.
Gloom became a marketable necessity, and myriad groups leaped on the bandwagon. Outfits such as New Order or The Cure gave birth to kind of theatrical gloom which was then pounced upon by successful miserablists like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds or Lloyd Cole. Neither of these bands were a patch, however, on this seminal act The Smiths.
Everyone emerged in such heightened states of distress from the 1980s. As a very young observer, their personalities seemed at times permanently damaged. My cousin Terence, for example began the decade an optimistic socialist fresh from university with a passable 2:1. He then spent the subsequent three years on the dole with his fellow Cambridge graduates eating sandwiches on squeezable cheese in his bedsit in West London, where everyone lived in those days.
He introduced himself to the blossoming socialist activism scene and turned into a fired-up leftie lunatic, hopelessly dreaming of a political utopia that was never going to happen. He then, wisely, turned to The Smiths.
The Smiths derived their power and massive following through tapping into the emotional extremities and difficulties that faced confused adolescents. They were not a band exclusively for isolated, outsider teenagers but leaders Johnny Marr and Steven Morrissey appreciated that pop music was purchased predominantly by this age group; therefore it would make sense to say something truer for a change and to use the pop song as a forum for outspoken, intelligent views on life.
Those were the days. Their debut record, together with the follow-up Meat Is Murder do expressly deal with such topics as repressed adolescent lust, extreme isolation and depression, but this record in particular seems more preoccupied with the process of adult manhood as one of transitional difficulty and impossible frustration.
The Smiths is an overly dramatic, introspective and plaintive record merely since the mindset of its adolescent audience would be too. The tone of the music correlates perfectly with the emotion and sentiments conveyed in the lyrics, which made it such a therapeutic album for many young people and provided such comfort and relief whenever the listeners felt overwhelmed by themselves. It is a record which does not patronise, pander or manipulate the listener. It merely invites them to connect deeply with the music in the hope that in some way it enriches or assists their lives.
Morrissey possessed a voice which captured the frightened child in all of us. No matter how intelligent, poetic or grown-up he sounded, he appreciated that we can never escape the shackles of our childhood; it is a period that imprints itself on all our lives. The pathos here is therefore one of profound sorrow, either at the hand the individual is dealt, and the process of graduating towards adulthood. It is evoked in such a poignant manner at times, that the power of this music is unavoidable and its influence is impenetrable.
The Smiths liberated an entire generation of listeners, allowing them to cope with their personal angst or just providing a voice for those who had been voiceless for too long. For all of Morrissey’s well publicised pessimism, the message they brought was powerful in its humanity.
This record is an astonishing achievement since it communicates the concept that for all the difficulty everyone encounters in life, love is impenetrable and omnipresent in the world no matter what. Yes, exactly what Richard Curtis has been saying for years but without the all-star cast or triteness. Those who listen to this album at face value will no doubt find it a rather miserable journey, but underneath its swirling depression lies an LP more life-affirming than a ditch full of Beach Boys records. No, I am not joking. Curtis made off with all my gags in 1998.
Reel Around The Fountain (5:57)
The Smiths was released in 1984 and conveys more than any other album the extremity and pathos of adolescent yearning. This landmark opener, for all its torch-light melancholy, is a beautiful and elegiac piece of music which proves the Marr and Morrissey relationship was perfection from the get-go. Since the listener is not supposed to disentangle each and every word Morrissey is singing the impression made by this tune is one not just of idle, fatalistic fantasy but of someone, confused, just trying to penetrate the surface of love as a concept.
The lyrics have a confessional intimacy about them, and no doubt whatever is being expressed has been held back for too long a time. Marr manages to keep his acoustic and electric guitar parts rather subdued, allowing instead the steady drumbeat of Mike Joyce and piano/ organ accompaniment from guest player Paul Carrack to help frame the sweeping performance from Morrissey who builds to his moving refrain of: “People see no worth in you, but I do, oh but I do.”
You’ve Got Everything Now (3:59)
A spikier track that highlights more blatantly the rough production values of producer John Porter (recently employed by Morrissey devotee Ryan Adams for his Love Is Hell LP) this track takes us back to some gruesome Manchester playground, or more specifically “the old grey school where I would win and you would loose.”
This track, as deceptively cryptic as the rest of the material, sounds rather like Morrissey just ruminating on his own time at school, where he famously suffered at the hands of a rather disciplinarian regime; expounded further on the controversial The Headmaster Ritual.The track rings truer to me as another lament to unrequited lust, or an almost masochistic desperation for the teen to be popular, witnessed by his plea to be “tied to the back of your car.” The tune is catchier and more playful, at any rate; the lyrics far too tongue-in-cheek to be digested with the most emotionally wrenching material on the remainder of the album.
Pretty Girls Make Graves (3:43)
One of the many tunes that helped people understand just why Morrissey was so keen to proclaim his celibacy, this is a bouncy little track which shivers with the cold, as though walking us hand-in-hand along this deserted pier as the scene he depicts here unfolds.
The unconventional song-writing technique of Marr is well established by this point in the album, and each tune has such a distinctive sound to it that often his layers of electric guitar which ring over the soft acoustic layers can be overlooked in their subtlety. In this case, the contentious lyrical statements expressed dominate the proceedings as Morrissey croons: “I’m not the man you think I am... I’m Sorrow’s native son.”
The tune explores what happens when attempts to attain this elusive love thing turn stale, and the results in this instance are bitter; rather like being cruelly dumped by someone close to you on a hideously windy afternoon in December. It fades out with an appropriately prolonged phrase, as though the person is disappearing fully from view and life. A very evocative and thought-provoking piece of music.
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (4:37)
A deeply disturbing track, here Morrissey’s introspective croon, the dark bass playing of Andy Rourke and the hypnotic guitars from Marr combine into a captivating tune which makes for compelling if wrenching listen. The emotion evoked here is almost overwhelming as some stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach is deployed over guitars which sway back and forth to create a dark, brooding lullaby. Morrissey croons as though singing a child to sleep, which makes his opening line such an evocative one: “Please don’t cry, for the ghost for the storm outside will not invade this sacred shrine nor infiltrate your mind.”
Whatever this tune is about, I have little idea, but it paints such a distressing portrait of suggested child abuse or potential tragedy in the family that through such elegiac poetry, the tears come in buckets during his final, haunting refrain of: “As long as there’s love, as long as there’s love...”
It depicts a troubled adult, desperate to shield his child from the barbarity of the world outside, and is an immensely powerful tour de force in both lyricism as pure poetry and Marr’s ability to capture the exact mood his vocalist is after. This is an example of The Smiths at their most extreme, but the beauty of this timeless song is undeniable.
Still Ill (3:20)
One of the first overtly political pieces from The Smiths, Morrissey kept his politics close to his chest, but his republican and anti-Thatcherite views correlated with most of the political bands of the era; such as the Pet Shop Boys who Marr would later work with in Electronic. “I decree today that life is simply not giving... England is mine, it owes me a living,” he begins, which still has to be one of the hottest and most contentious opening lines to a pop tune ever penned. Nobody raised hell as eloquently as Steven Patrick Morrissey in his heyday.
This began life as a up-tempo rockabilly shuffle in the vein of Rusholme Ruffians, replete with harmonica intro, which sat unnervingly with the downbeat chord change in the opening verse. This is the finest version when contrasted with the rough cut available on Hatful of Hollow. A softer, melodious tune, here Morrissey makes up for some of the weaker notes in his voice earlier by stretching out his protracted wails with genuine pathos at that gorgeous chorus: “We cannot cling to the old dreams anymore, no we cannot cling to those dreams... am I still ill?” Thank goodness I missed the 1980s. Sheesh.
Suffer Little Children (5:27)
The stink caused by this tune was almost legendary and in retrospect, it is hard to see why. The track was essentially, in my opinion, an attempt to perhaps link the desolation of something as hideous as the Moors Murders into the state of the climate and country of Britain as it existed at the time. Or if not Britain, exclusively the industrial north which had sufficient reason to want to hang its head in shame.
Morrissey felt perhaps that by making use of a contentious subject, he could help bridge some kind of gap between the north and south, and that the former’s perception of Manchester specifically being a repository for squalor and horror would be shattered. The perception had such a knock-on effect on the confidence of the city or its capacity to change that such despair as evoked in the lyrics would be necessary. The hushed, gauzy guitars here are pitch-black, and the tune hardly ends the proceedings on an high note, just with one despairing sentiment: “Oh, Manchester, so much to answer for.”
The Other Songs
Many slate Miserable Lie for its noisome drum beat and the shabby falsetto from Morrissey in the final half, but there is nothing ostensibly wrong with the track at all. It is a petrified-sounding, depressive tune about the extreme fear of accepting sex or love in any guise; trapped desperately inside a mind afraid of intimacy or ravaged by shyness: “I need advice, I need advice – nobody ever looks at me twice!”
This Charming Man is one of the cheeriest and most literate tracks the band ever released, with an agreeably hooky chorus, melody and one of the most famous lyrical snippets from Morrissey which helped make him a superstar in the first place: “Why pamper life’s complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?”
Hand In Glove would appear to be about homosexuality and although it is not the most agreeable tune with its abrasive harmonica section and rather lumbering melody it is perhaps one of the most liberating tracks to come from the pen of Morrissey, whether or not he himself is of that persuasion.
What Difference Does It Make? is incredibly bouncy and the music does verge upon eighties dance almost with its jangling guitars crashing together which had people moving to such bitter sentiments as: “But still, I’d leap in front of a flying bullet for you, so what difference does it make?”
Finally, I Don’t Owe You Anything which is the slowest tune here, and the most musically sparse, but is too prickly and romantic to be overlooked, despite the violence which simmers beneath those small jangled phrases of Marr on guitar. Perhaps one of the most understates Smiths gems, too.
The Smiths released better records than this, but never again did they come packaged in such a raw, awkward and naked form as this. Morrissey sounds as though he just stumbled into the band, his voice still in its nascent stage and the production is some of the grainiest one will ever find on an album of gloomy bedsit music. But, as I mentioned in the introduction, the music is here to liberate, challenge, comfort and be enjoyed.
There was little that The Smiths could not do in the time at the top, and this debut album is a perfect encapsulation of all the emotional honesty and power they managed to articulate in just one half of a tune. Most other bands would kill for just one Smiths moment throughout their entire careers. This is an unflinching, unsentimental and uplifting classic.
Rating: 10/10
No comments:
Post a Comment