Some of Moz’s best solo work.
Though his new album Ringleader of the Tormentors has some very solid songs I don’t think any of them can be considered to be among his very best.
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Morrissey – “The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils”
From far out of left-field comes this 11 minute and 15 second epic to open Southpaw Grammar. The scale and ambition of this towering song and its wholly unexpected nature make it all the more riveting, especially as an album opener. However, after this great song ends, the whole album promptly collapses onto itself. Perhaps MORRISSEY deciding to open the album with this song was more a matter of leading with one’s best foot and less an issue of being artistically brave. Get this song and forget the rest of the album.
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Morrissey – “Moon River”
Clocking in at close to 10 minutes, this HENRY MANCINI cover has a way of getting in your head and staying there. The Moz croons as convincingly as ever. And the sound of a woman sobbing loudly at the end is mixed in such a way that it adds pathos to the song. It could easily have been annoying and a distraction but it works.
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Morrissey – “Now My Heart is Full”
The opening track of the outstanding Vauxhall and I shows Morrissey in a positively jubilant mood despite the recent passing of three friends. The track reminds me of CAPTAIN SENSIBLE’s “Holiday in My Heart,” in the sense that it is another exuberant “heart” alluding album opener.
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Morrissey – “Springheeled Jim”
In addition to being an obscenely talented lyricist (more evident in his work with THE SMITHS) and tunesmith Morrissey shows great imagination in using sounds and the spoken word, often from films. Like Captain Sensible, again, he has an expansive view of what songs can be and harnesses sounds to effectively create moods and soundscapes that most musicians would never bother to try. “Springheeled Jim” engages immediately with a dissonance and sense of foreboding and the song remains captivating a decade later.
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Morrissey – “Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning”
Though in the years following Vauxhall the conviction in Morrissey’s singing was on and off, here, and on virtually this entire album, he invests all his feeling into every utterance.
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Morrissey – “Speedway”
The fabulous finale to Vauxhall shows Morrissey angry yet achingly vulnerable too. A powerful way to end perhaps his best solo album: “And when you try to break my spirit, it won’t work
because there’s nothing left to break.”
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Morrissey – “Little Man, What Now?”
A pulsating and softly percussive drum sound underpins bubbling guitars in a meditation on the more bitter than sweet experience of being “a star at eighteen and then suddenly gone.”
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Morrissey – “I Know it’s Gonna Happen Someday”
The Moz exhorting someone who can’t find love to keep the faith.
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Morrissey – “November Spawned a Monster”
“Sleep on and dream of love because it’s the closest you will get to love. Poor twisted child, so ugly, so ugly.” Ouch!
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Morrissey – “Break Up the Family”
On shedding one’s youth and being comfortable with stepping into the next phase of life.
