ALBUM REVIEWS

GREATEST HITS (LP) - released February 2008

"It’s been said a thousand times before, but Morrissey needs some dates. Specifically, the dates ‘2003-2008’ to suffix the title of this most lopsided of ‘Greatest Hits’. It’s more an extended MySpace profile box than a comprehensive summary of one of the most scintillating, troubled and triumphant solo careers in the living memory of a Galapagos tortoise.

Not that he’ll have Trades Description on his back, mind. Moz is the Blingleader Of The Compilors – since the release of his first solo album ‘Viva Hate’ in 1988 he’s produced a total of five compilation albums from his eight studio albums, each with a specific motive and purpose. The sublime ‘Bona Drag’ (1990) was a gathering of non-album singles and B-sides in the vein of The Smiths’ ‘Hatful Of Hollow’; ‘World Of Morrissey’ (1995) and ‘My Early Burglary Years’ (1998) were completists’ wet dreams (featuring crackly live takes of ‘Sister I’m A Poet’ and ‘Moon River’). Meanwhile, the two different UK and US ‘The Best Of Morrissey’ comps, in 1997 and 2001, made their own noble, if flawed, attempts to encapsulate Moz’s mic-whipping, shirt-shredding, bold pop sweeps into 20 subjectively selected tracks from the most über-subjective of all musical canons (what do you mean ‘Mute Witness’ isn’t on either? I WILL KILL YOU ALL!!!).

Honestly, there are dead rappers who’ve put out fewer compilation albums than Morrissey in the last 15 years, so ‘Greatest Hits’ needs to inhabit a particularly well-carved niche in order to justify its arrival on an already overcrowded Moz Best Of market. While you can only marginally question the maths – these are, for the most part, the 15 highest-charting Morrissey singles – there’s clearly an ulterior motive at work. There are four songs each from 2004’s ‘You Are The Quarry’ and 2006’s ‘Ringleader Of The Tormentors’, a grand total of four tracks from the previous six (!) solo albums, one live track and two new ones to rope in the collectors. By overlooking ‘Interesting Drug’ (Number 9 in 1989) and ‘November Spawned A Monster’ (Number 12 in 1990) in favour of lower-charting cuts from his last two albums, ‘Greatest Hits’ has been precision-tooled to send out the message that, after a six-year mid-career hiccup and a couple of below-par studio records (‘Southpaw Grammar’ and ‘Maladjusted’), Morrissey is now back bigger, better and more bankable than ever.

The Queen is what? Vauxhall and who? Oh no, Moz’s last two albums are like majestic blue whales in comparison to such puny musical minnows, um, right…?

So while there can be no quibble with the inclusion of classics such as ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’ (Moz’s string-kissed masterpiece of saccharine seaside alienation), ‘The Last Of The Famous International Playboys’ (his sparkling stomp-pop highpoint), ‘Suedehead’, ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ and ‘Vauxhall & I’’s elegiac, Oasis-ish stormer ‘The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get’ (the only song here released in the ’90s), it smacks of stubborn self-righteousness for Moz to include what he has. Namely the rather indistinctive ‘The Youngest Was The Most Loved’ and
‘I Just Want To See The Boy Happy’ over lower-charting earlier singles such as ‘Now My Heart Is Full’ and ‘Hold Onto Your Friends’, both of which could burst a bull’s heart at 500 paces.

Fanboy foibles aside, however, ‘Greatest Hits’ does give us the chance to step back and evaluate Mozzer Phase 2. What’s apparent is that ‘You Are The Quarry’ packed the big comeback pop punches while ‘Ringleader…’ worked brilliantly as a unified collection of dark-hearted atmospherica – a new dawning of personal and political frankness in Morrissey’s solo work – but was as much of a ‘singles album’ as ‘The Mars Volta Live At Rotherham Abattoir’. Fending for itself alongside ‘…International Playboys’ and ‘Irish Blood…’, ‘You Have Killed Me’ is another thoroughly pleasant Moz-by-numbers chug almost indistinguishable from ‘Alma Matters’ or ‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful’. Only ‘In The Future When All’s Well’ has enough fizz to show some pugilistic sparkle in the ring against the ‘Suedehead’ heavyweights.

And the two new tracks? A bag none-more mixed. ‘All You Need Is Me’ is a revelation; a taut, tight, tremulous punk rock titan of a tune bulging with the brute force of ‘National Front Disco’. It comes complete with a hefty dose of Moz’s trademark they’ve-all-got-it-in-for-me neurosis: "There is so much destruction all over the world/And all you can do is complain about me… you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone". ‘That’s How People Grow Up’, on the other hand, is easily the worst Morrissey single since ‘Dagenham Dave’, heralded with a painful operatic aria and boasting a chorus so underfed it could find work as a paparazzi diversion for Amy Winehouse.

A cracking set of tunes undoubtedly, but in epitomising what’s great about Morrissey and his music ‘Greatest Hits’ falls far short, too one-sided and celebratory of his current revival to properly plunder Moz’s mighty tune troves. Do yourself a huge favour and buy the last two albums plus ‘Vauxhall & I’ and ‘Bona Drag’ – you’ll get pretty much everything on here plus the truly ‘greatest’ bits on top." 6/10

Mark Beaumont, New Musical Express, February 7, 2008

"It's easy to mock acts for rushing out premature best-of collections after a couple of albums. As Morrissey's solo career hits the two-decade mark you'd think he's earned one - and so he has, but this is by no means the first draft. In fact, his discographical scorecard now reads: Studio Albums 8, Compilations 6. Though some of these collections have been the result of his label changes, Morrissey's always seemed an obsessive curator of his own work: His career is studded with mixtapes made for himself, whether as monumental as The World Won't Listen or as odd as World of Morrissey.

The outrageously imbalanced Greatest Hits falls somewhat on the odd side. Eleven of its 15 tracks come from the last three years, the career renaissance kicked off by his You Are the Quarry album. Of the five full-length records he put out in the 1990s, one song survives - the imperiously creepy "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get". It's not for casual fans who want a retrospective; it's not for new listeners who'd like to play catch-up. Who is it for?

If nothing else it's an opportunity to check the state of his art. His basic approach no longer varies much: A comfortable modern rock sound, muscular but curiously unshowy, light on instrumental hooks. The number of great Morrissey songs that are great for a reason other than Morrissey is small, and you get the feeling that's how he likes it. The music he uses these days is designed to give him maximum space - lots of room for his still-stirring vibrato, his meandering melody lines, and the recurring themes which define his career and his public personality.

One of those themes is how potential gets used, squandered, or curdled. How do sweet boys turn into criminals, or pampered kids turn into killers? He's been writing about this since 1989's "Last of the Famous International Playboys"- something of a touchstone song, it appears on more of his endless compilations than any other. "These are the ways in which I was raised," the song claims. "I never wanted to kill, I am not naturally evil." His explorations of the idea have become starker and more powerful as he's shifted from first-person to third - the best of his recent songs, "First of the Gang to Die" and "The Youngest Was the Most Loved", have a sinewy economy, getting quickly to the murderous crux of their protagonists' lives.

The idea that all this is rooted in a fascination with rough trade has become a cliché of Mozology. Listening to these singles, it seems to be more about kindred spirits: If Morrissey can work out how these destinies became so twisted, he might be able to track his own strange development. This is the other main Morrissey theme - the singer as a loveless freak of emotional nature, doomed to endless rejection, if not death - and unlike his lost-boys songs, his explorations of the topic haven't advanced much in 20 years. "You Have Killed Me", "Let Me Kiss You", "I Have Forgiven Jesus"- none of them are bad songs, but they're all more facets of what's become a dulled jewel.

"That's How People Grow Up", one of two new tracks, proceeds along these familiar lines: "Let me live before I die - not me, not I." To be fair to Morrissey, nobody mines this self-deprecating seam as thoroughly or effectively, but when the song's sudden ending flips into the magnificent "Everyday Is Like Sunday", I'm reminded of how much wider and fresher his perspective used to seem. The other new track, "All You Need Is Me", is much better - a venomous glam-rock rumble with his haters, accusing them of being more than critically obsessed with him. "There's a naked man standing laughing in your dreams/You know who it is, but you don't like what it means": Who else would sing that?

The paradox of Morrissey is that he's generally the most confident loner around, and Greatest Hits bears this out, presenting his current work as his best ever. Some would agree - and surely it's not his worst. Anyone who still cared when he slunk into seeming obscurity in 1997 singing songs about window cleaners and raging at long-gone bandmates must be thrilled by his renewed vigor and purpose. But even if you agree with the sentiment, it's a statement best made in interview rather than by this oddly assorted compilation." 6.1/10

Tom Ewing, Pitchfork, February 4, 2008

"Critics are contractually obliged to nitpick the tracklisting of compilations like this, but even by Morrissey’s standards of perversity, Greatest Hits feels like a rum do. Supposedly presenting the finest moments of his solo career, it consists primarily of songs from his last two albums. There’s no room for "November Spawned A Monster", "Piccadilly Palare" or "Boxers", while a ropey live version of Patti Smith’s "Redondo Beach" does make the cut. And yet, strictly speaking, commercially, Greatest Hits does almost exactly what it says on the tin: collect all his Top 10 (and thereabouts) singles of the past two decades. Compiled on this basis, you realise, a Smiths greatest hits would barely stretch to an EP.

Maybe this is all a way of demonstrating to his new label (Decca: the home of Vera Lynn, Billy Fury, Tony Newley and, lest we forget, Slaughter and the Dogs) that, far from trading on former glories, as he approaches 50, Morrissey is more popular – and even more notorious – than ever. Never mind the fact that the British singles market is now less of a hit parade, more of a car boot sale. In contrast to Jagger, Lydon, Strummer, Weller and Ian Brown, Morrissey has somehow contrived a solo career technically more successful than that of his former band. How on earth has he managed it?

His act has never really relied on youth – in some ways, like Piaf or the torch-song Sinatra, his style seems more suited to, and more poignant in, middle age – and yet in its extreme romanticism and amused anguish it continues to speak to new generations of adolescents. And, of course, he was never likely to alienate his existing audience with the sudden desire to make a drum and bass record. By now his steadfast musical conservatism seems almost regal – in the proudly obstinate style of Helen Mirren’s Queen outlasting a succession of prime ministers.

Indeed he’s lasted long enough to see the style he practically invented become almost de rigueur 20 years on – popular with everyone from the NME nu-indie kids to David Cameron. So much of British music in the first decade of the 21st century seems caught in a profoundly conflicted relation with the 1980s: just as bands like Coldplay offer a kind of insipid apology for stadium rock, the kind of indie once confined to Peel sessions is the new pop. As a figure both of the 1980s and profoundly opposed to the decade, Morrissey seems to have been a prime beneficiary of this odd mood. When a single like "You Have Killed Me" reaches No 3, you can’t help but feel it’s a kind of hysterical cultural overcompensation for the fact that, once upon a time, "Bigmouth Strikes Again" only reached No 26.

It’s hard to know how else to explain this strange indian summer of popularity. It’s not that his singles have markedly improved or indeed even changed very much since the mid-’90s. Quite the opposite. Cannily the Morrissey-chosen tracklisting here doesn’t run chronologically. If it had done so, even the chart placings may not have disguised the feeling that there would have been more wit and panache to be found on the first three tracks than on any of the subsequent singles.

"Suedehead", "Everyday is Like Sunday" and "Last Of The Famous International Playboys" were all co-written with Queen Is Dead producer Stephen Street, providing a natural continuity with The Smiths and suggesting that while Street may not have been Johnny Marr’s equal as a songwriter, he could nevertheless work as a superb arranger, in the style of John Franz with Scott Walker.

But something in Morrissey seems to have felt enervated by going solo, and longed to be back in a gang – albeit a gang where he was the boss, and his guitarist was unlikely to leave him alone and in the lurch. Hence Boz Boorer – introduced to Morrissey by Chas Smash of Madness – leading a series of sturdy if unremarkable bands through the 1990s. "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get" is their sole representative here.

The more recent singles are not without their success. "Irish Blood, English Heart" was a storming return from seven years’ exile, fired by Alain Whyte’s finest riff, and a lyric cutting to the quick of the liminality at the heart of his art. The infectiously grim "First Of The Gang To Die" meanwhile, was Morrissey’s first real radio crossover hit since "What Difference Does it Make?".

But even the recruitment of new guitarist Jesse Tobias and the extravagance of Tony Visconti’s production on Ringleader Of The Tormentors couldn’t disguise the sense of writerly exhaustion – something not dispelled by the obligatory and almost desultory new single, "That’s How People Grow Up".

The endless tours of the last few years really just confirm that by now Morrissey is deep into his Vegas period. Once upon a time he was the Complete Pop Artist with a neurotically perfectionist focus on every detail. The bland title and ten-year old photo of this new collection feel like the final confirmation that his focus is no longer there. There’s an odd majesty still to Morrissey, in his new eminence – however much he resists acceptance with his enduring talent for controversy and allergy to platitude. But you’re more likely to find it in his performance of the old songs, in the devotion of his audience, in the ritual of the concerts, than on his records any more."

Stephen Trousse, Uncut, February 5, 2008

Reprinted WITHOUT PERMISSION for non-profit use only.

"Students of the perplexing psyche of Steven Patrick Morrissey were given some helpful clues by the two taped songs with which he bracketed his memorably ill-tempered performance at Glastonbury four years ago: Big Hard Excellent Fish's Imperfect List, in which a fed-up scouser catalogues the myriad people and things that annoy her, and Frank Sinatra's deathless My Way. Here was Morrissey's worldview in a nutshell: beset by foes and irritants at every turn, our hero stands firm and unrepentant.

Like the Pope, or a psychopath, Morrissey is never wrong. Whatever crisis befalls him, he always considers himself more sinned against than sinning, the victim of malefactors including, but not limited to, managers, bandmates, journalists and High Court judges. Now, looking back over 20-odd years of burnt bridges, he denies responsibility while smelling suspiciously of paraffin.

This wouldn't matter were he musically self-reliant, but one of the curses of Morrissey's solo career is that arguably the finest lyricist of his generation cannot write a decent tune: another is that he cannot tolerate a creative equal for long. In The Smiths, he wrote to Marr's fluid, unpredictable music; the guitarist's vision sharpened and enriched his own. On 1988's solo debut Viva Hate, he played off two more great talents: regular Smiths producer Stephen Street and uncredited guitar genius Vini Reilly. "Morrissey is a very responsive singer," Reilly has said. "He'd always surprise me by singing the chorus over what I'd written as a verse - and vice versa."

But Reilly and Street were swiftly dispatched and since 1991, Morrissey's musical henchmen have been guitarist Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte: both capable, occasionally inspired craftsmen but employees, rather than peers, who never push him out of his comfort zone. For 17 years, Morrissey had insulated himself from real creative challenges. Even in his finest songs during this period, the verses sound like verses and the choruses sound like choruses.

That's not to diminish the scale of his achievements in reasserting his relevance after the seven-year exile that followed 1997's unloved Maladjusted. He made a striking, two-fisted comeback with You Are The Quarry and Ringleader Of The Tormentors, producing his longest ever run of Top 20 singles and demonstrating just how much his prickly intellect had been missed.

But Greatest Hits, compiled by the man himself, is too eager to press the point. Of the 16 tracks, four are from ...Quarry, four from Ringleader..., one is a recent live recording, and two are new. The 16 years prior to ...Quarry are represented only by his first three singles, plus 1994's The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get and (a UK bonus track) 1997's Alma Matters. While you can't imagine anyone sobbing over the omission of Ouija Board, Ouija Board, the logic behind snubbing the complex, compassionate November Spawned A Monster or the mighty Now My Heart Is Full in favour of a duff cover of Patti Smith's Redondo Beach is simply unfathomable. Neither a comprehensive sequel to 1997's EMI-years collection Suedehead: The Best Of Morrissey, nor a thorough career retrospective, it serves new and old fans equally badly.

This, then, is a portrait that's not just airbrushed - Morrissey triumphant - but cropped. Morrissey has been risk-taking, fascinatingly conflicted and genuinely vulnerable over the years, but he is none of those things here, where almost every track is a peppy, pointed rock song between three and four minutes long.

The track selection flattens his creative peaks and troughs into a straight line, and one that doesn't travel far. Over two decades since his droll apercus on the impossibility of contentment made him the musical lightning rod for a million discontented adolescents, they have calcified into shtick. In song after song, he is lonely and let down but none the wiser, because he sees every defeat as a kind of perverse moral victory. Even though new single That's How People Grow Up pretends to maturity it is far less grown-up than the autumnal self-analysis of Now My Heart Is Full, written 13 years earlier. Coming from a 48-year-old, "There are things worse in life than/Never being someone's sweetie" doesn't qualify as a shattering insight.

Yet, when he's not spinning his wheels into a lyrical cul-de-sac (or indeed a musical one: more than one song has the generic chug of Oasis album filler), Morrissey can generate wonderful high drama. From the Street and Reilly period, Everyday Is Like Sunday's vision of nuclear Armageddon as an excessive remedy for small-town blues is magnificent, its obviously synthetic strings enhancing the sense of willed grandeur in the face of impossible odds. Irish Blood, English Heart takes on national identity with a boldness and sophistication that no comparable figure would even attempt. First Of The Gang To Die and Last Of The Famous International Playboys are both brisk, irresistible odes to one of Morrissey's pet subjects: the brooding working-class tough. Singing about someone other than himself proves consistently liberating.

But another persistent theme rears its head on the second new track, tartly titled All You Need Is Me. Several times (Now My Heart Is Full, I'm Not Sorry, You Know I Couldn't Last) Morrissey has tried to have the last word, to write his own obituary, but never with such waspish petulance. The fuss over his recent comments on immigration electrifies already-written lines such as, "There's so much destruction all over the world/And all you can do is complain about me," and he signs off on a note of self-immolating triumph: "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone." Once again he is right and the wretched, treacherous, spineless world is wrong. But that defence can't apply to Greatest Hits: if this is Morrissey putting his case, if this is how he defines his solo legacy, then he has nobody to blame for its flaws except himself. For good or ill, he did it his way."

Dorian Lynskey, Q, March 2008