Morrissey

Ringleader of the Tormentors (Attack/Sanctuary)
by Stevo

Let’s start with you… You’ve never liked Morrissey or his pansy Smiths and you’ve smacked around your fair share of his crybaby fans, or been tempted to. Hell, I’m a fan and I’ve been tempted. Morrissey’s career and style, at face value, is a lot of overly dramatic posturing and quiff poofing, and it can all a bit too much. Hell a high court judge in the UK called him “devious, truculent and unreliable.” I think if he knew how much it would fuel Morrissey, he wouldn’t’ve bothered.

What a lot of people don’t get about Morrissey is his sense of humor. All those “Girlfriend in a Coma” boo-hoo lyrics you and Mojo Nixon made fun of in the ’80s were actually fucking hilarious. A semi-interested boyfriend who tries his hardest to act concerned for a girlfriend he wanted to kill, oh, but he’d just hate to see anything happen to her. Or when he uses a Ouija Board to contact a dead friend who he misses so dearly, and her ghost tells him to “shove off.” At any rate, you’ve been wrong about Moz, and it’s not too late to try again. The handsome old poofter is still putting out good records, and this one is produced by Tony Visconti. If you don’t know who he is, you don’t love rock’n’roll. Right from the Morrissey-in-Arabia kick-off track, “I Will See You In Far Off Places,” you get a surprisingly solid new Morrissey record. The dude’s track record for the last 15 years has been spotty at best, but perhaps the Bush administration has really fired him up for a comeback.
(www.sanctuaryrecords.com)