How do you solve a problem like Morrissey? I think there are some pretty decent tunes on his 14th album, Make-Up Is A Lie. Over an eclectic jangle of genres – post-punk, chanson, soul-disco bops – the 66-year-old singer is in fine, velvety voice, crooning his classic stock of despair, defiance, devotion, disdain and drollery into a microphone he’s always seemed to love more than his fellow humans. But instead of falling face-first into music as we once did and enjoying a good old wallow in self-pity, we must now approach it as a minefield. Oh, sweetness, was he only joking when he said…?
He doesn’t make it easy. Partly out of exhaustion, I thought I might have a go at reviewing this record without getting into Morrissey’s many controversial worldviews. But that’s not what he wants. Quite the opposite: he gets straight into it on album opener “You’re Right, It’s Time”, telling us over moodily meshed guitars, swerving synths and propulsive bass line, “I want to speak up and not be trapped by censorship”. Presumably, he’s still cross that his previous label, Parlophone, didn’t release his single about the 2017 Manchester bombing, “Bonfire of the Teenagers”, in which he condemns a society he claims went “easy on the killer”.
“I cast no shadow or reflection in a mirror now,” opines the man who’s since signed to another major label imprint (Sire) and who filled the O2 Arena with adoring fans last month. But he wants more, pleading, “I wanna let somebody love me if they can…”
In many ways, this is the push-pull schtick he’s been using since the early days of The Smiths. It reminds me of an old interview in which fellow literary Eighties rock star Lloyd Cole was asked to reflect on their friendship. Cole recalled: “He kept changing his phone and then he would send me postcards saying ‘You don’t call me!’ I got a little tired of that.” And yet, like so many Mozza fans, Cole couldn’t cut the cord, hoping that he was “still Cousin Lloyd”.
What’s good about this record? Well, the title track comes laden with musical drama – pounding percussion, violins and moreish zither – and lyrics about a meeting with a Parisian woman (Simone de Beauvoir, perhaps?). It’s a nice callback to Morrissey’s classic doomed romance. Then there’s a cool cover of Roxy Music’s “Amazona”, on which Morrissey’s vocal sweeps through the rambling art-school melody with glorious, grandiose yearning. If you’ve always enjoyed his anti-love songs about the dreary compromise of real-life relationships, then the slow-mo, trip-hoppy, xylophone-dappled “Headache” is the one for you. “What God has joined together, let no headache separate…” he purrs over an acidic electric guitar solo. “I don’t even like you”.
As for the bad… Morrissey’s conspiracy theory tune “Notre-Dame” (on which he peddles a swiftly debunked claim about the fire that ripped through the Parisian cathedral) can go in the bin. That and the daft nursery rhyme “Zoom Zoom The Little Boy”, with its lines about saving “cats and the dogs and bats and the frogs and the badgers and hedgehogs”. It’s funny to hear him celebrating music criticism on “Lester Bangs” (“this nerd hangs on your word”), given our miserable efforts trying to get a review stream for this album.
“How does it feel?” Morrissey asks the dead critic. “Bloody annoying,” says this living one. It would all be so much easier if the light of his creativity had totally gone out. But at his best, Morrissey still has the capacity to scoop up your heart and arrange it like a bunch of gladioli… before stomping it to bits, of course.
