Morrissey
Vauxhall And I
Sire/Reprise

Morose and morbid, melancholy and Mancunian, Morrissey has come a long way since the pop frazzled days of The Smiths. Having embarked on a solo career in 1987 following the demise of the band, he’s since go on to release some exceptional material (Viva Hate), some controversial videos (‘Bona Drag’ and ‘Kill Uncle?’), and has provoked an entire nation – the UK – into toying with the notion that he’s a jingoistic judicature. Paul Weller has even called him: ‘’a racist wanker,’’ and if that weren’t enough, local band Jet Black Machine – who are fronted by two English guys with a penchant for the Union Jack – were asked to support the Morrissey man on a few selected dates last summer.

So what are we to believe?

The finely-tuned racist pendant continues to alert those who choose to be tempted. From the English press to the minions of bed-sitter cronies, Morrissey’s either Hitler in drag or Jesus in disguise. The fact that his excellent 1992 album Your Arsenal contained a song called ‘The National Front Disco,’ only adds fuel to the debate. Whether or not the inclusion of said song was purposefully designed to add (vitriolic) fuel to the ongoing debate, is another matter; but what isn’t, is his responsibility to impressionable listeners.

With the release of Vauxhall And I, Morrissey will be a solo artist longer than he was a Smith. And while Johnny Marr continues to dabble in the studio, Morrissey finely hones his song-writing skills to the point of being utterly unique. Unique as in instant, original, intelligent and sardonic.

Produced by Steve Lillywhite, there’s a feel of quiet confidence to the album which is all the more accentuated by its more than personal subject matter. ‘Now My Heart Is Full’ is substantially sullen as well as undeniably memorable. As a mini-stage play in all of 4:57, it finds Morrissey reclining on an analyst’s couch of admission (‘’And I can’t explain/So I won’t even try to’’), as his four-piece band of two guitars, bass and drums beckon to his call. The repeated title makes for an incisive chorus, while the structure ensures the listener’s attention never wanders. The same can also be said for ‘Spring-Heeled Jim’ with its background ninja drama ala cockney wide-boys. Mid-paced with trepidation, Morrissey tells us to: ‘’take life at five times your average speed/Like I do.’’ ‘’I’’ in this case, being Jim (but you’re never quite sure). Steaming and sexy without being obvious – perplexed maybe, but never obvious – ‘’Spring-Heeled Jim’’ concludes with its alter cockney ego admitting: ‘’And they catch him/And they say he’s mental…’’ Hence, the art of diversion just about comes clean.

Radio friendly ‘Billy Budd’ may be the rockiest song on the album, but it’s also one of the more succinct and evaluated. The first two verses are repeated before the narrator tells us how he: ‘’took his job application into town,’’ but was turned down, and all because of ‘Billy Budd.’ But instead of moving on, the narrator would sooner lose parts of the body: ‘’I would lose both of my legs/If it meant you could be free.’’ Coy, gay and terribly British, ‘Billy Budd’ could well be ‘William It was Really Nothing’’s long distant cousin.

‘Hold On To Your Friends’ and ‘I Am Hated For Loving’ are musically benign yet lyrically traumatic, whereby Morrissey hankers after a friend’s understanding in the former (‘’Resist or move on/Be mad, be rash/Smoke and explode/Sell all of your clothes/Just bear in mind/There might just come a time/When you need some friends’’ i.e. himself), and someone, anyone’s humanity in the latter (‘’I still don’t belong/To anywhere/I just don’t belong’’).

‘’I bear more grudges/Than lonely high court judges’’ sings Morrissey mid-way through ‘The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get,’ possibly the finest pop song on the album; pop songs of course, being his forte - ‘’Honestly, I’m not motivated by anything other than a great love of pop music, of songs that one can hum, which I’m afraid are sorely lacking in pop and rock music today.’’

Aided by a Mick Ronsonesque guitar riff throughout (perhaps in honour of, seeing that Ronson died shortly after having produced Morrissey’s Your Arsenal), the song comes on like a persistent toothache that just won’t go away: ‘’I will creep into your thoughts/Like a bad debt that you can’t pay/Take the easy way/And give in.’’

From persistence to a musically charming song of distress, ‘Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself’ is the vintage Morrissey we’ve come to either love or despise. It’s ethereal and acoustic, fast-paced and dour, as if he has too much to say in too little time. As guitarists Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte (both of who co-wrote the album with Morrissey) strum jaunty, acoustic rhythms, Morrissey’s semi-confrontational words do lament: ‘I’ve been stabbed in the back so many times/I don’t have any skin/But that’s just the way it goes.’’ Reminiscent of Paul Weller’s ‘That’s Entertainment’ (which Morrissey actually recorded), ‘Why Don’t You’ may well be one of Morrissey’s most self-introspective songs he’s written to date.

Still the loner but perhaps not quite as lonely, Morrissey continues to take us on his merry-go-round of closet Leonard Cohen misgivings, as ‘Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning’ and ‘Used To Be A Sweet Boy’ illustrate. Both lean toward the dank side of life, with ‘Lifeguard’ evoking Tom Waits’ ‘The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me’ (from a conceptual viewpoint), especially the lines: ‘’As an outstretched arm slowly/Disappears/Oh Horray/Please don’t worry/There’ll be no fuss/She was… nobody’s nothing.’’

Happy stuff or magnetically astute?

Either way, it works because it transports the listener unto depths not otherwise considered (the norm). Where most pretend, Morrissey challenges. And where most repeat, the Morrissey continues to awaken new meaning. What’s cool about this, is he does so without resorting to the obvious (such as the gospel according to every single heavy metal band to have emerged within the last fifteen years), the fashionable (such as the floppy hat contingent - spearheaded by the transparent Levellers), or the lame (such as the Stetson and stringent parameters adhered to by ninety-five percent of all dangerously dull c(o)untry folk - currently doing the rounds of peace, hope and liberty).

Vauxhall And I is Morrissey’s finest solo album. It’s mature, conceptually invigorating, lavishly produced and put over in such a way as to provoke optimism. Not the sort of myopic optimism served up at the shopping - mall week in and week out - or from behind the bar – night in and night out – but the sort that comes from within.

Pop music at its finest.