THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

One of the oldest acquaintences of the blog – Friend of Rachel Worth – mentioned the other week that he’d be interested in hearing how I would rank the order of each of the ten studio albums released by Morrissey over the course of his now 27 year solo career. I’m never one to resist a challenge, and so here in, descending order:-

10. Southpaw Grammar (1995)

I have tried really hard but there is very little that I can bring myself to love on this album. I never imagined Morrissey recording and releasing songs that were in excess of ten minutes in length nor did I ever imagine that large parts of the songs would comprise instrumental solos from his band members. Oh and the two singles lifted from the album were really poor efforts.

There is no doubt that the release of this album challenged Morrissey fans to broaden their horizons and there were some critics who thought it a brave, bold and ambitious move. Not me.

9. Kill Uncle (1991)

This suffers from being released on the back of an outstanding debut album and a whole range of mostly tremendous non-LP singles which very few of the Kill Uncle songs come close to matching. Quirky is a great word to describe the record but sadly, the dull parts far far outweigh the really good parts. And the best songs were the two singles…

8. Years Of Refusal (2009)

There are some really good moments on this record with some cracking lyrics but overall I find this just a bit too bombastic for my tastes. It’s a record that provided Moz with some of the most positive reviews of his entire career but I can’t help feeling that such critics, younger than myself for the most part, will have taken satisfaction from a record which sounded like something they had grown up with in the 90s as opposed to us sad old gits who yearned for lighter sounding material

7. Maladjusted (1997)

This could have been one of the greatest albums of his career as there are a number of outstanding songs on it, but it is very badly letdown by some of the worst things he has ever recorded – those of you who have followed the singles rundown will know where I’m coming from. The title track remains a live tour de force.

There was of course a very interesting re-release in 2009 with two of the weakest tracks being taken off and six additional songs (many of them very good b-sides plus the held-back scathing attack on Mike Joyce) – if this had been the original release of the LP then it would certainly have been in the Top 5.

6. World Peace Is None Of Your Business (2014)

In a few years time this might rise up the chart as it is growing on me a fair bit. There’s a lot of great music on this album which is let down by some of the most cringe-worthy lyrics that Moz has penned as he seeks to ram many of his personal views and beliefs down the throats of listeners. I find some of it quite distressing.

Like Malajusted, this could have been a tremendous LP if some of the songs on the bonus disc/record had been included within the main release at the expense of what I feel are some of the weaker and most cringe-worthy songs. It would have been fascinating to hear the songs played live as I’d be very interested to see if his band, with all their rock-edges and constant abilities to butcher some of the great Smiths singles, can capture the lovely moments that this record provides – there is a chance to do so in Glasgow on 21 March but I have decided to give the gig a bodyswerve.  Tickets ranged between £50-£72 plus booking fee and handling charges and I can’t bring myself to pay that for an arena that holds 12,000 fans – especially when just a mile or so up the road there’s this even more attractive gig.

5. Viva Hate (1988)

The solo debut which suffered at the time from being a record without the talents of Johnny Marr. It was tough getting over the break-up of The Smiths but the release of the single Suedehead provided great hope for all fans. Sadly, very few of the tracks on Viva Hate matched its brilliance but on the other hand a couple of songs surpassed even the majesty of the debut single. For that alone, it holds a high place on my rundown although there are some songs I just don;t listen to all that often nowadays.

4. You Are The Quarry (2004)

The comeback album after a seven-year absence which proved he hadn’t lost it. For a while I thought this was my favourite solo album, largely on the basis of the cracking singles that were lifted from it but also because it was so exciting to hear new material after such a long time. However, as time has marched on there’s a few songs which I feel haven’t aged all that well – even in such a short period of time – and so it has slowly slipped down the list.

3. Ringleader of the Tormentors (2006)

The proof that the comeback was going to be sustainable. Soundwise, this was every bit as unexpected and surprising as Southpaw Grammar had been but this time in a good way. There were all sorts of weird and wonderful sounds spread across the album from all-out rock numbers to material that lended itself to being recorded and performed by a full orchestra. An unexpected joy at the time made all the better by the fact that it was toured initially through gigs at some very small and intimate venues normally off the beaten track which made the songs all the more memorable. I don’t expect to hear him record anything like this again.

2. Your Arsenal (1992)

Kill Uncle had seen many folk write off Morrissey – I was one of them if truth be told. I didn’t see how he could possibly make me feel excited about music again when there was so much great stuff to listen to out there and when my musical tastes were broadening considerably to take in, for instance, grunge and rap along with a new-found appreciation for country. But I hadn’t counted on the biff bang pow factor of this record albeit I was uncomfortable trying make sense of some of the lyrics which initially made me feel Moz was sympathetic to right-wing Nazis and football hooligans. A record that still sound fresh all these years on.

1. Vauxhall And I (1994)

Opening with what I feel is the finest solo song of his career (and I still will never fathom why it wasn’t a single….I can imagine it still today being lauded by millions and given the awful cover-version treatment on ‘talent’ shows) and closing with a track that many fans rate as one of the best things he and his band ever do on the live setting. This is as flawless a studio LP that he has ever released and one of my favourite albums, by anyone, of all time.

So there you have it folks.

mp3 : Morrissey – I Will See You In Far Off Places
mp3 : Morrissey – Seasick, Yet Still Docked
mp3 : Morrissey – Speedway

mp3 : Morrissey – All You Need Is Me

Not quite true, but an ideal way to end this long-running series which has looked, in what I hope has been an objective way, at all of the singles Morrissey has released during his solo career.

I’ve kept this till last, partly as I thought it was a great title to round things off, but also because of something bizarre that happened about two-thirds of the way through the series when I originally featured it about five years ago on the old blog.

When I started out, I wasn’t sure if I was in fact going to cover every single, mainly as I didn’t have all of them in the collection either on vinyl or CD. As time went on I realised with a little bit of wheeling and dealing on ebay and discogs that I could get a hold of everything and so I went about sorting things out.

I hadn’t bought all three version of All You Need Is Me on its original release in June 2008, going instead for just the CD as it was on offer in the indie record shop. Then maybe two or so months back , I noticed someone was selling both 7″ singles. So I went into make a bid….and discovered that the seller was none other than Rol, who, as well as being a regular reader of The Vinyl Villain, had his own blog called Sunset over Slawit. (sadly now defunct, be Rol is still entertaining us thanks to My Top Ten)

I sent Rol an email asking if, instead of a bidding war on ebay, he perhaps had a price in mind over which we might be able to come to an arrangement. To my delight he said yes. And to my delight and astonishment he said I could have them for free and that he would even pay for the postage.

As I said at the time it’s those sort of gestures and acts of kindness that make all this blogging malarkey so worthwhile.

Rol said that he was happy to do all this as a thank you for all the postings I had done over the years and for giving him the chance to listen to some songs he had either long forgotten about or which were new and enjoyable. I still would have been happy to pay the going rate for the singles…..

So what are the three final b-sides brought forward for your aural pleasure? Well, one is a quite rare live cover version that the great man only ever performed on about seven occasions while the other two are songs that would have improved his last LP if they had been kept back for that:-

mp3 : Morrissey – Drive-In Saturday (live)
mp3 : Morrissey – My Dearest Love
mp3 : Morrissey – Children In Pieces

The more than passable cover of the David Bowie single dates from May 2007 and was part of the encore of the gig held at the Orpheum Theatre in Omaha, Nebraska. It was preceded by Everyday Is Like Sunday and followed up with the last song of the evening, You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side.

My Dearest Love is a fabulous song, one that is heavily dominated by the piano and as such a real welcome move away from the brash guitars that have been such a prominent part of most tunes since Jesse Tobias joined the backing band and got involved in writing material.

Children In Pieces may well have been inspired by the 2002 movie The Magdalene Sisters which was written and directed by the superbly talented Peter Mullan, a resident of Glasgow (and with whom I once got drunk at an awards ceremony!!). Morrissey’s song deals with similar themes covered in the movie, and while the lyrics are direct and unflinching, it doesn’t quite work as they are sung over an upbeat and plodding tune that is completely out of sync with the sentiments. Maybe one day Morrissey will return to the lyric and re-record it with a more appropriate tune…but I doubt it.

Both of the two new b-sides were produced by Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolla, who is best known for his score for Brokeback Mountain.

All You Need Is me only reached #24 in the UK charts when it deserved so much better. But as this series has shown, an awful lot of the singles suffered a similar fate.

Morrissey? We’re gonna miss him when he’s gone…….

Next Sunday will see the start of a new weekly series…which coincidentally is also going to have 48 parts.

And so it came to pass that in the year 2014 AD, Steven Patrick Morrissey released four download only singles, all of which would subsequently appear on his critically acclaimed LP World Peace Is None Of Your Business, the tenth studio album of his career.

I’m not all that convinced that it is the memorable return to form that many people have been raving about this past few months. It does have a number of more than decent tunes, but there’s also a few clunkers in there as well, while the marketing ploy of having ‘a deluxe edition with bonus tracks’ was annoying, especially as the inclusion of a number of these tracks on the ‘official’ album would have made it a far stronger record.

The download singles were, in chronological order:-

– World Peace Is None of Your Business : released on 13 May and which reached #83 in the Uk singles chart

– Istanbul : released on 20 May

– Earth Is the Loneliest Planet : released on 3 June

– The Bullfighter Dies : released on 17 June

Each of them came with a music video consisting of a spoken word performance which was a neat twist. I had planned to provide links to said videos but they’re not available anywhere, innocent victims of the spat which broke out between the singer and Harvest Records in respect of the (non) promotion of the new album.  Here’s what Morrissey said about it in an open letter:-

PLEASE CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND ME: Morrissey statement

In response to 77 million questions I can only say this much on the subject of the Harvest drama. It is quite true that Harvest initially appeared like a saintly beacon of light, and they instantly packed us off to France where we recorded World peace is none of your business. The universe was back in balance, and we all considered this to be the very best Morrissey recording ever, and even the boo-hoo-suck-it-off elements of the press appeared to want to agree. At last I am born.

It all seemed too good to be true. It was. I believed that the rich soil of the album had several strong hit singles. Frayed tempers began when Harvest arranged the ‘spoken word’ films, none of which gave any clue as to what World peace is none of your business intended to be, or is. The films were OK, but they went nowhere and stayed there.

With every nerve alert, we pushed the label for a proper video for Istanbul to precede the album, not least of all because a single ahead of the album release might inch the album to a higher chart position. The label backed off, even though Istanbul received 55 radio plays in just seven days on a major US station. Instead, the label requested a fifth spoken-word film, which naturally had me fumbling around for an axe: no independent thought required. The UK label, meanwhile, created a quite fantastic television advertisement to transmit during the week ahead of the album release. I could taste excitement once again. The TV ad never appeared and my hackles bristled as my bristles heckled. The label responded with frosty aloofness, and I suddenly realized that we were not, after all, of the same species. I ploughed into them insisting upon “proper band videos, where the band play and I sing” – an evidently confusing concept that required seven weeks of explanation, detailed graphs and several drawn up maps.

The label suggested I come to Los Angeles and read passages from Autobiography in front of selected audiences. As frightening as that idea was, I hung on, desperate to believe that Harvest were not as cheap as they now looked. I hope to finish this statement whilst I’m still clean-shaven, so I will jump to the final curtain: during the weeks of the album release, the label were minus one single structural idea, and it appeared evident that each member of the team was acting in separate rooms without doors or windows. Mutual mistrust exploded between Harvest and I, and with fashionable pessimism, the label boss yawned and ordered the surface smartness of dropping World peace is none of your business three weeks after its release. There, now! This would not have happened to the Teletubbies.

Sorrily botched the project may now be, but it’s worth it to get Morrissey out of our Inbox. Yes, I can be intensely persistent, and I certainly have an over-active fantasy-life, but the Harvest experience tells us that despite the blinding flash of teeth and smiles, it doesn’t take much for the coin to flip and suddenly we’re all compromised and shattered. All you need to do is disagree with the vanity of the label boss and your beheading will be slotted in between bottles of the most average champagne on the market. Just one weak-chinned drone can assert the fist of injustice and all of our efforts are flushed away. And thus … they were.

I might be wrong, but I think World peace is none of your business will instantly disappear from iTunes and record stores and every download-upload-offload outlet on the planet, because Harvest technically have no right to sell it.

Most of the Harvest team are very nice, and I sincerely thank them for trying and caring so much – even if their promotional duties were fully undertaken by the Morrissey audience themselves, whose You Tube videos for World peace is none of your business fully provide the art that the label could not muster. The listeners instantly understood how entertainment could also be art.

Staggeringly, I still believe that there’s a label out there with my name on it, and one that will issue World peace is none of your business, and afford it the respect it deserves.

Thanks for reading this (rashly assuming that you have), and thanks once again to the Harvesters who tried.

We are boot-camp ready for Lisbon in October, so with the will of many gods, hopefully at least 38 of you will turn up.

MORRISSEY
20 August 2014

He was right – the album was removed from i-tunes and the various download outlets.

Given that there was meant to be a ‘proper’ release of a new 45, it seems fair to feature it today:-

mp3 : Morrissey – Istanbul

The final part of this series will appear next week after which I’ve a plan for a new Sunday feature. Stay tuned.

Sorry folks….I did have at one time all the tracks that were made available with this release but I’ve seemingly deleted the file. Here’s the stuff from the 7″ vinyl:-

mp3 : Morrissey – Satellite Of Love (live)
mp3 : Morrissey – You Say You Don’t Love Me (live)

Enjoy