The Smiths
“I loathe most of the stuff from the late Sixties” – Johnny Marr, perhaps explaining why I don’t like his band as much as I’m supposed to
“I had a very small bedroom and I remember going through periods when I was 18 and 19 where I literally would not leave it for three to four weeks. I would be in there day after day, the sun would be blazingly hot and I'd have the curtains drawn. I'd be sitting there in near darkness alone with the typewriter and surrounded by masses of paper. The walls were totally bespattered with James Dean, almost to the point of claustrophobia and I remember little bits of paper pinned everywhere with profound comments.” – Morrissey, aka “Mr. Frat Party Mega-social Guy”
“If I weren't 100% all heterosexual man of steel and machinery, I'd probably be a flittering fop for the wily lil' rascal too!” – Mark Prindle
Albums Reviewed:
This is the latest I’ll ever let a poll winner go without reviewing them, I promise. I stupidly had just started Bob Dylan last time when the Smiths won, and then I had to move across the country. So here we are. It’s mid-August, I’m 3,000 miles away from where I was when the Smiths beat out a strong challenge from Axl and his lads, and I’m finally reviewing this band, to which, thanks to that stupid poll, I’ve been listening off and on since February. And I’ve only started liking them just now. Maybe I should refrain from reviewing British post-punk acts for a while, as it’s clearly not my cup of tea. Sure, in time I grew to love Joy Division, and I’ve similarly grown to like (though certainly not love) this band, but the effort it took to enjoy both of them without the brain of a morbidly depressed teenager from Manchester surgically implanted into my head (which would have been mighty helpful) was frankly annoying. At least I ended up enjoying them, though, and I suppose it says something about them that I sensed enough depth in the music to bother to put in the effort and didn’t just give everything a 6 after 3 listens. Or maybe it just says something about me, namely that I’m neurotic. Who knows.
Enough of that, though. This is a fine band we have here. Not a great band by any means, and their earliest stuff more often than not just leaves me cold and unimpressed, but once they had a year or two’s worth of albums under their belt they became one perfectly fine arpeggiated jangle guitar indie band, even if I don’t like them as much as I’m probably supposed to. Their supposed historical importance is also somewhat baffling to me, but perhaps that’s because I live on the left side of the pond and haven’t been inundated with the thousands of bands that sound like a crap version of the Smiths you guys have apparently had. I guess you could call them the British version of R.E.M. due to the roughly analogous time periods in which they started and the similarly jangly guitars they so often employed, plus their frontmen were both effeminate vegetarian weirdos. Ofcourse, the Smiths broke up while they were just getting real good (right after they finished recording their best album, but before it was even released!), while R.E.M. opted for the slow slide toward irrelevancy they’ve been on for the last decade or so. Plus R.E.M. didn’t sing about child molestation or homosexual rape. At least as far as I know.
The Smiths’ bassist was Andy Rourke and their drummer was Mike Joyce. No one mentions anything else about these two men, and I will be no different, for it’s the guitarist and the singer to whom you should focus your attention. It’s a shame Johnny Marr’s songwriting only sporadically matched the quality of his guitar playing (and then when it finally got there consistently, he left the band! Blooch!), but he truly was a fantastic guitarist, and it’s easy to see why so many British bands I’ve never heard of but apparently existed claimed him and his band as an influence. Lots of clean, ringing, arpeggiated lines, jangly sounds, lovely harmonics, and all sorts of other interesting things, and although he couldn’t really rock real good, he occasionally did so decently (“The Queen is Dead,” a bunch of stuff from Strangeways, Here We Come). He was the principal musical innovator of the band, leaving all the lyrics, attitude, and public posturing to vegetarian, gay, celibate, Oscar Wilde-obsessed Mr. Steven Patrick Morrissey and his giant Vegas croon of a voice. He was weird. He gave outrageous interviews in which he claimed the Smiths were the greatest band in the world (before they even put out their debut album), trashed most of their rival bands as crap, lamented that Margaret Thatcher hadn’t been killed in the Brighton bombing, and, along with his ironic and frequently misunderstood lyrics, gained the band enough notoriety that they actually had to deal with a scandal labeling them as child abusers before they even put out an LP. He performed with a hearing aid and gladiolas stuffed in his back pockets. He was really, really effeminate. Jocks hated him and his band with a passion. But he was one helluva charismatic, interesting, and unique frontman, and, except when he broke out his sad excuse for a falsetto (which sounded almost as bad as Geddy Lee), he had a superb voice. But christ was he weird.
In your picture above, from left to right, you’ll find, from left to right, Joyce, Morrissey, Marr, and Rourke. Despite only really being around for four years or so, the band was incredibly prolific. They released four full-length LP’s in that time, as well as boatloads of non-LP singles that were often as good as or better than the best tracks on their records. They’ve also released too many goddamn compilations to count, and a suitable Smiths collection isn’t complete without at least one of the B-side/single/rarity/BBC session/outtake/etc. collections they put out. There are about 50 of them, so it shouldn’t be too hard to locate one. As long as you have a CD or two with “Ask” on it, you’re in good shape. That song owns.
And, onto the reviews!
The Smiths (1984)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “You’ve
Got Everything Now”
I should really start planning
my moves better. Remember when I moved to
New York in the middle of reviewing Cream and had to spend my first couple of
weeks there listening to a bunch of albums by a band I liked, but didn’t like
as much as I was supposed to? Yeah. I really
should have done the Smiths before I left.
I’m not even like sure if I like them as much as Cream (it’s probably
about the same), plus they’ve got more albums.
But here I am, spending my first two weeks after moving into my new
apartment in El Lay listening non-stop to Smiths
albums. Christ, can you think of a
band less “LA” than the Smiths? Darkly ironic Vegas croon British guy singing
over mid-eighties proto-indie guitar jangle is not the image I get in my head
when I’m catching sight of Bobby Lee stumbling around drunk on Sunset Blvd or
running into Dr. 90210 at an outdoor mall in
Except for
two really good songs which I’ll get to in a minute, the vast majority of the
Smiths’ self-titled debut album with the disturbingly homoerotic cover art is
either boring or annoying, but never both.
I suppose you could make the argument that something boring is by
definition annoying, because maybe it’s annoying for you to be bored, but do
you want to argue over semantics or do you want me to write a half-assed review
of an album I don’t like very much? So
yes, although very little of it actively sucks and Johnny Marr’s arpeggiated
guitars are always a fun time, especially on my far-too-expensive headphones I
somehow managed to tote all the way to LA without breaking for the 10th
time (quick review of my cross country drive: Nebraska? Sucks!
OK, so
that’s the little bit that sucks. Now,
the two really good songs. First, though
“Reel Around the Fountain” is admittedly six minutes long and about as mopey as
a song can be, I actually find it lovely, despite the fact that it’s about
child molestation and/or homosexual statutory rape. The guitars are delectable, and the piano
touches are gorgeous. Slow and mopey is
good if the song deserves it, you know?
Then it just becomes “pretty.”
Plus that line about “the bee’s knees” or whatever is great (I’m gonna
make a shocking statement that has never been uttered before in the history of
music criticism: Morrissey can be pretty clever when he wants to be). The other song I thoroughly enjoy is “You’ve
Got Everything Now.” Large chunks of the
song just sound like a generic (and therefore quite badly-produced) The Smiths wannabe-rocker, but at least
these chunks aren’t awful, and the chorus entrances (“no, I’ve never had a
job…”) are transcendent. The extra ringing guitar arpeggiations that
Marr brings in here are fantastic, and it makes me wonder why he could only
come up with an idea this great once
on the entire album, especially when this is supposed to be the most
influential British guitar-rock band of the last twenty-five years or whatever
and here I am giving their debut album the same grade as the fucking Arctic
Monkeys.
Now, the two songs I totally
dig are tracks 1 and 2, and the song that makes me vomit comes at track 3,
which leaves a good 30+ minutes of consecutive boring and/or annoying yet
semi-pleasant decency left. Supposedly
“Hand in Glove” was the big single that got everyone all hot and bothered about
this band and Prindle loves the song, but I don’t see what the big deal
is. “Oooh, they actually have a pulse
and there’s a harmonica! Kick-ass!” No.
The Smiths were never that good at all-out rocking (actually, they were
horrendous at all-out rocking; my favorite songs of theirs are usually their
snappy 3-minute singles, a bunch of which ofcourse never even showed up on
their proper studio albums, which wouldn’t be retarded if this were 1962), and
this song is no exception. I mean, it’s OK, I guess, but where’s the
melody? It’s kinda loud and too ringy,
too (like, what, half the songs on this record?
Who produced this damn thing, Marlee Matlin?), and (dare I say it?) annoying, though at least Morrissey doesn’t
break out the falsetto (no such luck on “Pretty Girls Make Graves,”
however).
The remainder of the album isn’t totally devoid of quality, ofcourse, or else the rating up there would be a fair bit lower than 6, but nothing else left really excites me. “This Charming Man” is a nice little sprightly rocker that points to future and more successful attempts at pseudo-rootsiness, and “Still Ill” has some nice guitar sounds and a decent bit of energy. I guess “What Difference Does it Make?” was a big single too, right? It’s fine, nice drive. Not a big fan of the vocals, though (Hey! It’s the falsetto again! FUCK!). Hell, for all I know it wasn’t even a single; I’m just going by how many times it shows up on their innumerable compilations. I’m not British, so it’s not like I’d heard any of these songs before I reviewed this band anyway, not that I’d remember mopey mediocrities like “I Don’t Owe You Anything.” And did you know the closing “Suffer Little Children” is about the infamous Moors murders? Actually, because I’m an American moron, I had to look up what the Moors murders were (turns out they’re pretty brutal; yikes), but now that I finally know what the subject matter is, I do enjoy the song more than I did the first, oh, fifteen times I listened to it. Lends it an air of creepiness instead of just being, you know, boring. But not annoying.
So that’s about it, I guess. This is a very uninspiring record. It’s not bad enough to dislike, and it’s not quite good enough to really like. It’s just, I dunno, there. It’s fine. If you’re not paying attention to it the whole thing, except for the awesome chorus to “You’ve Got Everything Now” and entire disaster that is “Miserable Lie,” will just drift right on by. But the guitars are purty most of the time and Morrissey is always interesting, so I guess it’s acceptable. If you’re a depressed British teenager I have a feeling you’ll like it more than I do, though.
Hatful Of Hollow (1984)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “William,
It Was Really Nothing”
As I mentioned in the intro, the Smiths released an assload of compilations and re-packaged their material enough times that most of their songs are on at least two and as many as 749 different, widely-available record albums. As I also mentioned in the intro and then briefly alluded to in the last review, the Smiths habitually left a bunch of their best singles off their regular albums, a fact that makes all those innumerable compilations not superfluous like we’d all like them to be but in fact just as essential as their regular albums to get a full picture of the Smiths as a band. And look! It’s only been a few months since their debut album and we’ve already got our first one! Fantastic. As with all these things, it’s a smorgasbord of stuff, ranging from BBC sessions and alternate takes of songs from their debut (you’ll find more than half of it here, but at least every song is reproduced in a different, albeit usually weaker, version) to singles and B-sides and everything in between. So if you loved this band’s first album so much that you want another hour of material that sounds just like it, I suppose this is your lucky day.
The less said about the alternate versions of tracks from their debut, the better. It’s not like any of them are radically changed or anything; they’re just not as good. “Reel Around the Fountain” is more mopey than pretty this time, and the choruses to “You’ve Got Everything Now” are much less detailed and interesting, and since those choruses were the one moment on that album that made me sit up and take notice…well fuck that. At least they tend to choose the better songs to include weaker versions of (so no “Miserable Lie,” and I think I’m really starting to enjoy “Still Ill”), but these songs are not why people buy this record.
It’s the singles, man, and three of the best you’ll find from these guys are contained herein. “William, It Was Really Nothing” is the first truly fantastic Smiths single. Just two minutes of quick acoustic strumming underlying popperific arpeggiated jangle Marr guitar loveliness and a light, breezy, almost airy chorus. Just brilliant. I don’t even mind the little falsetto hiccup that comes up near the end. More songs like this and the dramatic “How Soon is Now” and I wouldn’t begrudge this band their otherworldly reputation so much. Have you heard “How Soon is Now?” Wow. It’s seven minutes of this one tremolo-ed chord and some other indeterminate guitar sounds and that’s basically it, but the tension and dynamics in it are breathtaking. I don’t even think Morrissey’s vocal melody is all that much to write home about, either, but I’m not sure if this song even needs vocals to be effective. And if you just want something pretty, look no further than the brief, closing “Please Please Please, Let Me Get What I Want.” No percussion needed this time, just a variety of expertly crafted guitar sounds and an end product that practically floats through the listener’s head. What’s that instrument in there at the end, anyway? It fits perfectly! Man, what great songs.
However, that’s three tracks out of, what, sixteen? It’s a lot, in any case. The album as a whole pushes the hour mark and, except for those moments of brilliance, just sounds like a bunch of early Smiths songs. I can’t even tell most of it apart from itself. I don’t like this band as much as I’m supposed to, and I really don’t like their earliest work as much as I’m supposed to. “Handsome Devil” has a funny line in it about “mammary glands,” but I can’t recall anything else about the song. In theory “Back to the Old House” should be good, since the solitary acoustic guitar in there really is gorgeous, but the song just bores me. Whatever. Again, this album’s not that bad, but very little of it is good either. Except for the three money singles, it feels like a ramshackle and less enjoyable outgrowth of the first album. And yes, I know it has “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” on it, but, except that for that cool line about Caligula, I don’t find that song any better than all the others I can’t tell apart, so poop on it. Except for a few winners here and there, I just don’t buy early Smiths.
Meat Is Murder (1985)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “How Soon
Is Now?”
Although our good friend Saucy Telepathic Erection over at the All Music Guide rates this one a bunch lower than the debut and claims the group seems “unsure quite how to proceed,” I’m gonna make the not-so-controversial claim that Stephen once again has his head up his ass, because this record is far better than all that stuff the band was toting around in 1984. No, I’m not gonna call this a “great” record or even a “very good” record. I’m actually giving it the same rating Steven does and I think the band improved on it with both of their subsequent records. However, I do like it. So this is the first Smiths record I can definitely say I like. See, I like the Smiths. I do. Not tons, and not even close to as much as every depressed teenager in Great Britain seemed to twenty years ago, but I like them. And I like this record.
First off, for the American release “How Soon is Now?” was slapped right in the middle of the album for some reason (and I mean the exact version that was on Hatful of Hollow), and it’s not like there are any “William, It Was Really Nothing”-level snappy pop masterpieces to go along with it, so it goes without saying that’s the best song. It’s not even a discussion, really, although there are some other tasty, interesting tracks to be found, like the fun little acoustic rockabilly shuffle “Rusholme Ruffians,” which sounds not a bit like anything from either of 1984 albums. Neat song there, and I appreciate how it’s only taken one album for the band to start branching out a bit. Sure, The Smiths and Hatful of Hollow provided the blueprint for mopey British indie bands to follow for the next two decades, but they weren’t very good! Morrissey is on record (much after the fact, ofcourse) as saying he hated the production on The Smiths even when they released it (one thing we agree on!), and while to my knowledge he’s said nothing about thinking the albums were boring, one-note, underwritten mopefests with a few great songs tossed in almost randomly to piss off this 2-year-old kid in New Hampshire who in twenty years would create a world-famous record review website and perform drumming duties for the greatest graduation party cover band the planet has ever seen, I can only assume he was thinking something along those lines as well. There are stabs at old-time rootsiness here that at times almost resemble boogie, for god sakes, as well as some interesting new tempos and atmospheres and guitar tones. There’s less mopeyness, too. Far less. There’s some, sure (for instance, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the six-minute vegetarian diatribe title track; there had to be a better way to close the album), but not much.
Beyond the added variety, though, the songwriting is just better. Take the opening “The Headmaster Ritual.” No way they write this song a year ago. Or if they had, the fantastic arpeggiated guitars would have been produced like ultra-high ringy shit, the fast, energetic tempo would have been herky-jerky and annoying, and Steven’s ultra-cool “la-la-la-la-dee-day!” or whatever parts would have just been him yelping in a falsetto like his nuts were in a vice (Hey! I just described “Miserable Lie!” God, that song blows). As it is, though, it’s just a very strong song all around. Probably my second-favorite after “How Soon is Now?” I dig “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,” too, a slow ballad that nicely and subtly adds its layers until building to a suitably large money shot climax. It’s not like an all-time classic song, and they’d better it later, but it’s good, you know? Like the jumpy bit of fifties hibbity jibbity that is “Nowhere Fast.” Just solid material, and material in styles and moods quite different from the two things it seemed the band was capable of on its first two albums.
Not all of this stuff works flawlessly, ofcourse. I admire “What She Said” more than I like it, for instance. It’s a nice try, and I see how they were trying to go in a direction similar to “Nowhere Fast” and “Rusholme Ruffians,” but that high ringing guitar riff doesn’t really work, and Morrissey’s vocals are weak. “I Want the One I Can’t Have” sounds too much like something I would have skipped by without thinking twice about on the last two albums, and “Barbarism Begins at Home” is based on this weird cowbell disco rhythm that just sounds odd coming from these guys. It could probably work pretty well if Morrissey didn’t bark like a dog and the song weren’t so long, but seven minutes? Except for “How Soon is Now?”, at this point the Smiths were not an extendo-track band, so the fact that they end this album with two of them is a bit of a downer. I like “Well I Wonder,” though. That song’s purty, and the rain sounds and extra guitars at the end are fantastic. But, ahem, Steven? The falsetto needs to go.
So, anyway, better. From here on out, I like this band. I still don’t like them as much as I’m supposed to, but if you toss out their two 1984 albums, they’re a very nice band. Can you feel the enthusiasm?
The Queen Is Dead (1986)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Cemetry
Gates”
Better still! I was actually gonna be an anti-hype asshole and give this album a 7, but then just today when listening to it I realized that a good half the songs on this album are fantastic. It’s practically changed my entire attitude toward this band! Seriously! One really good album out of four vs. two really good albums out of four. That’s a big difference! I still don’t like them as much as everyone else (except Prindle) seems to, but I’m definitely starting to see what all the fuss is about. And it only took me listening to their most famous album 500 times after writing annoyed reviews of their crap 1984 output.
So yeah, this album’s real strong. To depressed British teenagers from the mid-eighties, an 8 is still gonna seem awfully low, but I suppose that’s their problem. If they go through time to complain, I can go tell them to flame Prindle and the 6 he gave it while I focus on how, just like Meat is Murder, The Queen is Dead finds the band pulling things off they didn’t seem capable of on their last record. Take the title track opener, for instance. It kicks ass! I’m serious! I mean, it doesn’t kick ass in a Motorhead or AC/DC way or something (random thought: how funny would a reality show where Lemmy and Morrissey are forced to live together be? I find this almost as amusing as the theoretical conversation between Dr. Dre and Ian Anderson I proposed when I stuck that N.W.A. album on the prog page to be a dick), but it books. The Smiths have never booked before. Maybe someone spiked Mike Joyce’s coffee or something, I dunno, but the song moves, and Johnny’s guitars really fit it to a tee. Before this song, the Smiths had never been able to make a song good without its being a) pretty (see “Reel Around the Fountain”) b) haunting (see “How Soon is Now?”) or c) snappy and/or jaunty (see “Rusholme Ruffians”), but this song is none of those things. It’s just fast and energetic! That’s it! When they tried to do that on their 1984 stuff, it sounded like total ass, and they didn’t even try it on Meat is Murder (I suppose “The Headmaster Ritual” could be used as a rough analogue, but it’s really a totally different kind of song). The guitars even have a faint wah-wah touch to them…or maybe I’m just hearing things, I dunno. The last thirty seconds or so just kick total ass. Most ass the Smiths ever kicked. The total amount of ass they’ve kicked is very small, yes, but the fact remains.
The band is still most at home on those short, snappy-type songs, though, and I for one find “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” a riot. Very bouncy, very snappy, and dig the lines about Mr. Shankly’s “bloody awful poetry” and how he’s a “flatulent pain in the ass.” It’s a hoot, I tell you! It sounds better coming from Morrissey, anyway. I enjoy this album’s lyrics immensely. Tons of little one-liners like that, and not so morbid, either. He even makes a song about death seem uplifting and lovely (“There is a Light that Never Goes Out”…I’ll get to that one in a bit; lovely organization in this review, huh?), and catch the self-deprecating Oscar Wilde reference in “Cemetry Gates,” one of those perfect, rushing, snappy Smiths singles in the tradition of “William, It Was Really Nothing” I wish there were more than a handful of. This one’s better, too, and for my money the band only bettered it once in their career (a song that, ofcourse, never ended up on a regular album). I swear there’s like a little xylophone or something back there. Whatever’s making that barely-audible little ringing sound just makes the song even sprightlier. When the Smiths are really on with one of their snappy singles, that’s the best adjective to describe them: sprightly. I can’t think of a band that could produce songs as sprightly as “Cemetry Gates” on a semi-regular basis (if “one or two a year” can be classed as “semi-regular”). Hell, “Vicar in a Tutu” does the rockabilly thing better than the rootsy-ish tracks from Meat is Murder, too. The little short songs on this album are money.
If everything were as good as that, though, I wouldn’t be giving this record an 8. For some reason, in between the brilliance of “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” and “Cemetry Gates,” the band decided to stick two go-nowhere slow dirges (“I Know It’s Over” and “Never Had No One Ever”) that provide the main reason I was gonna give this thing a 7 originally. I simply do not like either one of these songs. Compared to, say, “Miserable Lie,” they obviously sound like Mozart, but they both just kind of fiddle and diddle around without building to much of anything, as if the lessons the band had learned on “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” have been forgotten. The falsetto of death also strikes one more time (thankfully, the last) on “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” which otherwise is actually a pretty damn good, energetic rocker. What bothers me is that the falsetto is so unnecessary here. I mean, for the love of god, he’s OVERDUBBING IT! He’s singing normally, and then he layers himself singing in his patented Looney Tunes falsetto crap voice right over it! Why? Goddammit. I’ll never understand you, Morrissey. You’re like a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a tortilla. Man, I’m hungry. Is Baja Fresh still open?
Oh! Never mind that. I have to finish listening to “There is a Light that Never Goes Out.” I still say the Smiths are best at snappy, sprightly singles like “Cemetry Gates” and “William, It Was Really Nothing,” but that big, overemotive croon of Morrissey’s, when given the right lyric and melody, can really hit you hard. Witness this song, specifically the “and if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die!” over a big, emotional synth chord thing part. That Steven may be a gay, celibate, vegetarian, pompadour-ed weirdo, but he’s one charismatic dude with one hell of a voice. As long as he’s not doing a falsetto.
The last two songs here are fine. “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side” is apparently famous for some reason, but outside of the cool Morrissey-scat vocal parts a-la-“The Headmaster Ritual” I don’t see what’s so special about it. It’s certainly fine, though. A generic The Queen is Dead song is miles ahead of a generic The Smiths song, if only because it has a pulse, plus there are more neat little lines like the one about Antony and Cleopatra in “Some Girls are Bigger than Others,” which if you ask me really shouldn’t have been the closer. Great arpeggiated guitar part, sure, but wouldn’t “There is a Light that Never Goes Out” have killed as the closer? After that one, “Some Girls’ Tits and Bigger than Other Girls’ Tits, but Steven Doesn’t Like Any of the Girls’ Tits Because He Likes Penis Instead” seems a bit anticlimactic. I guess it’s a small complaint, though. It only took me like three months and too many listens to count, but I finally like this album enough to give it an 8. Snappier, faster, more diverse, and more interesting than what they’d done before, it’s a Smiths album I’d actually recommend! And it’s not the only one, either! And the sad thing is I still don’t like them as much as I’m supposed to.
Louder Than Bombs (1987)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Ask”
Compilation #2, released in
Oh, it’s not so bad, if only because of the Smiths’ continued insistence on leaving a bunch of their best songs off their regular albums to be released as separate singles. There are a ton of singles on here, and most of them are winners. The trio at the beginning of “Is it Really So Strange?”, “Sheila, Take a Bow,” and “Shoplifters of the World Unite,” for instance, are all just good, solid examples of the “sprightly Smiths single” in all its glory. The first two, especially, have this kind of cool, drunk shuffly vibe going on that I fully endorse. As you go through the album, more of these great single-type songs keep popping up, like “Panic” and its fantastic “hang the DJ!” refrain, the infectious piano rockabilly of “Shakespeare’s Sister,” and the driving “You Just Haven’t Earned it Yet, Baby.” These are great songs! And my two favorite newbies aren’t even mentioned that much by the “general critical establishment.” The subdued “Half a Person” and its “sixteen, clumsy and shy…” refrain is just lovely, and the criminally underrated “Ask” is easily my favorite Smiths song ever. What energy! What beautiful, ringing guitars! Dig the harmonica, too (much better than the one in fucking “Hand in Glove”). And can you find a melody as perfect as that “the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb…” chorus? You can’t! Well, yes you can, plenty of them, but I don’t think you can in the Smiths’ catalog, at least. You know, under it all I’m realizing the Smiths were really just a glorified singles band, which is why, with one exception, even their better albums are uneven and filled with at least a few subpar stabs at…well, whatever “Never Had No One Ever” was supposed to be a stab at. If they keep it short, snappy, fast-moving and sprightly, and Johnny Marr is having a good day at the office with his layered guitar arpeggiation stuff, then it’s tough for the Smiths to do wrong, at least if we’re after 1984.
I really
wish this were just an unreleased singles compilation and were only like half
an hour long. I’d totally give it a 9. But
alas, you know it’s not. Like half of Hatful of Hollow is here! Just copied and pasted right on! And while ofcourse I’m not gonna complain
about “William, It Was Really Nothing” or “Please Please Please, Let Me Get
What I Want,” that’s just two songs. Why
do we need “Hand in Glove” again, for
christ sakes? And I didn’t like “These
Things Take Time” or “This Night Has Opened My Eyes” or like five other songs
the first time, so why am I gonna like them this time? I guess “Back to the Old House” is at least
given a more interesting treatment this time (all the rest are exact copies, by
the way; this is the only alternate version), but it still bores the living
daylights out of me. Ugh. Not all the newbies are the tops,
either. Everyone splooges over “
There are like ten more songs I haven’t even mentioned, but that tends to happen when an album has twenty-four tracks and the reviewer doesn’t have ADD. You’ll actually find a higher number of top-quality Smiths tracks on this album than on any other, so if you don’t care about an equally large amount of mediocrity to sift through to get the ten or so gems, then this is probably your best bet. And it has “Ask” on it!
Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Death Of
A Disco Dancer”
The Smiths’ last album is their best. I know that’s not what most people think, but that’s what I think, and we all know I’m the final authority on such matters. It’s also the only one I didn’t have to force myself to like, and that’s always nice. Listening to an album and going “hey, this is good!” instead of going “wow…this isn’t my cup of tea, but it’s probably pretty good if I listen to it 15 times to get used to it.” Much better that way. I think the reason I like it so much is that, compared to the Smiths’ other albums, it’s the biggest. Compared to something by, say, Led Zeppelin, to call it “big” would be ludicrous, but compared to The Queen is Dead, for instance, it sounds BIG. Big, loud, hammering drum sounds, big guitars, lots of strings and xylophones and synthesizer things and overdubs and other added instrumental fun as well. Good times.
Ofcourse, this led a fair number of people to call it an “overblown” disappointment or some such bull when comparing it to the “masterpiece” that was The Queen is Dead, and I’ll admit it’s odd to hear these giant booming eighties drums coming from this quaint, sullen little indie guitar pop band, but for some reason they work here, along with the other ingredients in this newfangled BIG production style. My theory (and this really isn’t that clever at all so don’t start thinking along those lines, all five of you reading this review) is that it just matches Morrissey’s voice. His voice has always been BIG, and now he’s not singing that gay falsetto or doing anything else retarded anymore, so it’s just BIG and BOOMING and CROONING and he even growls a couple times here and there, so it’s like the weight of the band’s production has finally caught up to the weight of their fruity vegetarian Oscar Wilde-obsessed lead singer. Or maybe, you know, they’re just writing better songs now, which is usually the reason some albums are better or worse than others. Truth be told, Prindle and I are the only people that think this is the Smiths’ best album, so you probably shouldn’t listen to me anyway.
There’s really not a song on this album I dislike, which is noteworthy because no other Smiths record can come even close to claiming that. Even The Queen is Dead had 2 or 3 songs I flat-out didn’t enjoy at all. The flip side, I guess, is that none of my top five or so Smiths songs show up on this album, but I guess I’ll take that. As I’ve said before, the best Smiths songs, to me, are always their brief and wonderfully sprightly singles, and if you give your band giant, booming eighties drums and lots of strings and stuff, you kind of lose your sprightliness. So there’s no “Cemetry Gates” or “William, It Was Really Nothing” or whatever on this album (and certainly no “Ask,” which is so fantastic it probably should’ve been written by somebody else). “Unhappy Birthday” and its bouncy acoustic self is the closest the band comes to “sprightly” here, but it’s tough to be so when the lyrics are about shooting your dog and eventually killing yourself (oh, if you pay attention to lyrics more than me, death is pretty pervasive in nearly every song here; a bit of a downer after the wonderful cleverness of most of The Queen is Dead). The best song that might’ve been “sprightly” had it been written a year or two previous is “Girlfriend in a Coma,” but the title alone should be enough to tell you why this song is no “Ask.” It’s a fantastic tune, though. The bass line is wonderfully bouncy, though, and the strings during the “do you really think she’ll pull through?” part are massive and grand. Or I guess you could call them “big.”
But regardless of this lack of the stereotypical, “light” Smiths single, quality songs abound here. I for one love the accordion-accented, echoey opener “A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours” (specifically the growl Morrissey does with his voice that I mentioned before; sounds fantastic), and “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish” is full of horns and loud, flashy guitars and one of those computer-accented “smack” snare tones that usually sounds silly, but it fits this song to a T for some reason. Morrissey does that growl thing again, too, which again rules. The song is nothing but a big, loud, groovy eighties rocker. It just happens to have been done by the same band that wrote “Reel Around the Fountain” three years ago. It’s BIG! And so is my favorite song on the album, the massive “Death of a Disco Dancer,” on which the band seemingly rediscovers the wonder of dynamics they apparently tossed aside when they made those two slow asspile songs on the first side of The Queen is Dead. Admittedly, the song is kind of awkward at the start, but it builds to a simply massive climax, and you know who gets to lead the way this time? Not Morrissey or Marr, but the drummer! Mike Joyce, bee-atch! Sure, Johnny’s guitars get gradually louder throughout the song, but the way Joyce is hammering at the end, it’s almost like he’s held this Animal-from-the-Muppets streak in since the early eighties and he’s having some kind of catharsis letting it out. In any case, it sounds marvelous.
The best song left is the wonderfully catchy “Paint a Vulgar Picture,” its super chord sequence and even better guitar solo, but, again, there’s not a single song here I dislike. Nothing outstanding, just a consistently very strong rock record from start to finish (it’s also just nice to be able to call something by the Smiths a “rock record” without chuckling, which is probably another reason this is my favorite by the band). I’ll admit “Death at One’s Elbow” is a bit strange in how its almost-electronic intro leads into a harmonica-led pseudo-skiffle piece, but it’s neat if nothing else, and I’ll also admit “I Won’t Share You” is probably too minimalist as the closer, but it’s got a nice melody and the almost mandolin-y guitars sound lovely. So sure, why not. A thoroughly enjoyable album, this is. A nice, big-sounding, diverse collection of chimey eighties indie-rock songs (that, for once, actually attempt to rock) that happens to be full of depressing lyrics about death, but why are you listening to the lyrics, anyway? Oh, because Morrissey’s vocals are always pushed way up front in the mix and he has a reputation as a true poet among his many devoted fans? That’s ALL?
Rank (1988)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Ask”
Surprisingly good example of the perfunctory live album always released a year after a band breaks up while still immensely popular. It’s from a show in late 1986, so the bulk of the material is drawn from The Queen is Dead and its surrounding non-album singles (which means “Ask” is on here!! Yeee!!!!!!!!!!!), with a few songs from Meat is Murder tossed on (shockingly no “How Soon is Now?”, though) and one throw-in from 1984 (“Still Ill,” which I’ll accept as being better than most other options; plus the take here is far better than the version on either The Smiths or Hatful of Uselessness). It proves two things you should probably know already, namely that Johnny Marr is an excellent guitarist and Morrissey is an incredibly unique and engaging vocalist, while also providing evidence that the band actually knew how to rock out pretty good but just chose not to on most of their studio material. Witness how “The Queen is Dead” totally kicks the original’s ass all over the stage and how that song on Louder Than Bombs where the band randomly decided to do a distorted garage rocker (“London”) is actually good here and loses none of the rocking power it was probably intended to have in studio but didn’t because it wasn’t very good.
Anyway, as I said before, if you dig The Queen is Dead and Louder Than Bombs, you’ll probably like the song selection here. A full six of the ten tracks from The Queen is Dead are here (leaving out “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” (Boo!), “There is a Light that Never Goes Out” (Hiss!), “Never Had No One Ever” (Hooray! Fuck that song!), and “Some Girls are Bigger than Others” (I have no reaction to this omission)). In addition to what is obviously the greatest Smiths song of all time, “Panic,” “Is it Really So Strange?” and that distorted rock song are taken from Louder than Bombs, and “Rusholme Ruffians” and “What She Said” from Meat is Murder. There’s also this cool, hypnotic instrumental track called “The Draize Train” that has perhaps some of the best guitar work from the entire performance, but never mind that. Looking at the track list, and considering the songs taken from Louder Than Bombs and Meat is Murder, it looks like the band made a conscious effort to go with their snappier material here, and if you’ve been reading these reviews even semi-thoroughly, you’ll realize that’s a decision I heartily endorse. So yeah, sure, we have to sit through eight goddamn minutes of “I Know it’s Over” (a song I’m slowly starting HATE, by the way), but, except for “Bigmouth Strikes Again” (which also annihilates the version on The Queen is Dead), nothing here clocks in at much over four minutes. Short and sweet, baby. Just the way I like it when the Smiths are concerned. And you don’t lose Johnny Marr’s guitar work either. Far from it, actually! I think his best stuff occurs in these snappy pop songs, as he tosses out intriguing chord sequences and lovely, quick arpeggiations and crap like it’s nothing. “The Queen is Dead,” “Ask,” “Cemetry Gates,” and the second half of “Still Ill” provide standout examples of this. High, ringy, and lovely! And that “Draize Train” thing, too. I like that thing.
The star is Morrissey, though. He growls and mumbles and howls and yelps and warbles and vibratos and teases his way through the show like, well, the uniquely and oddly charismatic man that he is. His affectations in “Still Ill” alone are worth the zero dollars and zero cents I spent on this album. If you like his work on the not-as-of-yet-recorded Strangeways, Here We Come like I do, you’ll dig him here. And if you dig the Smiths at their sprightly, poppy best, you’ll like this album (as I prematurely cut off this review a paragraph early and go to bed).