Morrissey - Years Of Refusal

A new Morrissey review? Anybody who knows me is likely surprised to see this since if I'm blogging about it, it means that I probably like it. And the truth is, to be honest, I had written off Morrissey many years ago.

The Smiths are easily one of my top ten favourite bands of all time, and I stayed loyal to his solo work for a few years as well. In fact, I stayed loyal longer than many of my peers in the sense that I rather enjoyed his mild foray into prog with 1995's Southpaw Grammar. However, I thought that 1997's Malajusted was just plain bad, and ever since then I found it hard to succumb to any of the 'comeback' assertions of his post-2000 material. I gave both 2004's You Are The Quarry and 2006's Ringleader Of The Tormentors a brief perfunctory listen, but nothing really grabbed my attention in the way that Morrissey once did, so I moved on to other things.

Now here we are in 2009, and I'm exposed to so much music these days that a new Morrissey album hardly even registers on my listening radar. But I happened to catch this performance of Black Cloud, a song off the new album, on the Jimmy Fallon show and I was really impressed. I continued hunting and also found this performance of Something Is Squeezing My Skull on Jimmy Kimmel, and I continued to be impressed. His voice sounded good, the lyrics seemed witty and unforced, and the melody was pure Morrissey. This led me to obtaining Years Of Refusal and what can I say? Once again, I'm impressed, as this album proves to be worthy of its praise. In my opinion, this is probably his best album since Your Arsenal.

It's not a perfect album and, as once could expect, there are a couple of moments where Moz reuses and recycles a bit, but hey, what would you expect from a man on the verge of turning 50? Overall, the songs are very strong, containing some of his best lyrics in years. For example, Black Cloud contains the line, "I can choke myself to please you and I can sink much lower than usual but there is nothing I can do to make you mine." Classic! Add to that the fact that the tune boasts a powerful bassline and killer chords (courtesy of Jeff Beck) and it becomes pretty obvious that what I heard in Fallon's studio was much more than just an unusually good performance. I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris, the first single, proves that Morrissey is still very good at writing a decent pop song with a strong hook. Because his lyrics remain slightly left of centre, people never really acknowedge him as a pop song craftsman, at least not on this side of the Atlantic. But there's about five or six songs on this album that are sure to stick in your head once you've heard them. Besides the three I've already mentioned, All You Need Is Me also falls into this category. Apparently this song, (along with a lesser tune called That's How People Grow Up) were already featured on last year's Greatest Hits album, but the song was still new to me and I found it to be rather hillarious. Lines like "There's so much destruction all over the world and all you can do is complain about me," aptly conveys the idea of a lover who knows that his significant other needs him more than she loves him, but unlike earlier Moz hits like I Know It's Over, he actually sounds as if he finds the situation mildly humourous this time. By far though, the undeniable standout on this album is It's Not Your Birthday Anymore, one of the best songs that he has ever written. The lyrics are quite personal, as his hypnotic croon acknowledges that "your voice it might say no, but the heart has a heart of its own," before a huge bombass of a chorus blasts the question, "do you really think we meant all of those syrupy sentimental things that we said?" This song is energized and epic, and it climbs to levels that most modern day stadium bands should really strive to reach one day. If there has ever been any doubt as to whether or not Morrissey is still relevant (which, as I admitted earlier, there sorta was,) this song should shut us all up. In fact, the whole album is strong enough to do this, and I, for one, am glad to welcome him back to his rightful throne.

Above photo is from myspace.

Myspace: Morrissey
Video: I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris on youtube

Other stuff:

A few posts ago I was swelling with anticipation over the new Son Volt album, although my info was somewhat limited. Well, Billboard has all of the deets including the album name (American Central Dust), as well as its date of release (July 7th.) Exciting. [Myspace: Son Volt]

Junior Boys, who just played The Mod Club at the end of March, have just released their third album, entitled Begone Dull Care. You can hear a full stream of the album here. Their Mod Club show was reviewed at For The Records. [Myspace: Junior Boys]

Dead Leaf Echo also have a new record ready for release this month, entitled Truth. The song Act Of Truth is being streamed on their myspace page right now, and it's all kinds of shoegazey awesomeness. [Myspace: Dead Leaf Echo]

I have openly admitted to a handful of my closest friends that I don't think Britney Spears' Womanizer is all that terrible in a "I'll never put it on my ipod but I do tend to tap my feet when I overhear it elsewhere" sort of way. Well, obviously Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos shares my thoughts. More info as well as Franz Ferdinand's cover of the song is on Stereogum. [Myspace: Franz Ferdinand]

And the lineup for this year's Pitter Patter Festival looks pretty cool. It runs from May 28th-31st, takes place in 10 different Ontario cities and it's a pay-what-you-can affair which is undeniably cool. You can take a gander at the bandlist over here.