Accepting Steven Morrissey

I didn’t care about the new Morrissey record, Years Of Refusal, until it was recommended to me by a metalhead; my friend Eduardo from the band Ankla was talking it up the other day. Now I know Mexicans love the shit out of Morrissey, but Eddie’s from Puerto Rico, and that’s a completely different ballgame. So, with curiosity piqued, I picked it up and have been spinning it this week, letting it sink in.

I’ve gotta admit, the music behind many of the tracks- such as the opening Something Is Squeezing My Skull and third track Black Cloud- earns a few repeat listens.

The lyrics, consistently forlorn and occasionally hostile, make the album feel like a break-up record. Morrissey has been pulling this trick for years- famously refusing to define a sexual preference, claiming to be celibate, even calling himself a “fourth gender.” Yet his lyrics are soaked with emotions seeping from the cracks of complicated relationships.

I haven’t been following Morrissey’s career lately, but I’m far from unfamiliar with The Smiths and his early solo stuff, as a child of the 80s. Of course, just being a child of the 80s doesn’t automatically grant one a firsthand knowledge of the bodies of work of Mötley Crüe, Prince, Bauhaus, and all contemporaries. (Poseurs get this one wrong a lot- hipsters play with their personal taste history and talk about how when they were kids in the glorious 1980s, it was all about, like, Iron Maiden… and Bon Jovi… and Madonna. No. Come on, alright, Bon Jovi maybe you little fairy, but be real and admit that you were way too insecure for Prince and Madonna, goth music was way the fuck off your little suburban radar, and you had absolutely no clue what to make of all the filthy metalheads and their completely inaccessible satan music.) It wasn’t like it is today, when you can have a toe in every little scene with the help of the internet. It was so hard to get your music fix, you had to depend on firmly planted roots in a very specific clique.

But while I was rocking out to Skid Row and Guns N’ Roses convinced they were the pinnacle of recorded art, my Mom was going through a big Cure / Smiths phase. It was relentless. She’d blast The Queen Is Dead every fucking minute of every day. When she was vacuuming, she’d double the volume. And either she vacuumed a lot, or the few times she did were so fucking traumatic that it’s all I remember of my childhood.

I fucking hated the Smiths.

But somewhere in my teen years, way after Mom kicked her little Brit-pop habit, I came around a little. I don’t know what did it. Maybe by then Oasis and Blur had cracked the ice a little bit, and noone can deny that Bigmouth Strikes Again is one of the best songs ever recorded. I remember actually picking up Morrissey’s Vauxhall And I via Columbia House or BMG or whatever record club I was scamming free CDs out of at the time. When my Mom noticed it, she called me a gay hypocrite. Actually, no, I made that up.

But she probably thought it.

But anyway, that’s a really long-winded way of saying that despite all of the reasons a rock n’ roll addict might have for hating The Smiths and Steven Morrissey, the quality of the songwriting can’t be contested. I wince while watching the video for the new track I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris, because it’s a little tough watching a 49 year old man pout like a sixteen year old girl:

But at the same time, I couldn’t trash Years Of Refusal here and sleep well at night. It’s a good album, and the strongest I’ve heard from him since Vauxhall And I. There’s genuine punk energy behind tight rockers like All You Need Is Me, and cultural depth to the the vaguely Latin-flavored When Last I Spoke To Carol and One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell (it’s the horns).

By the third or fourth listen through the entire album, I started to hear what Eddie was talking about. The grade of the pop constructions on the disc have me picturing Fall Out Boy and The Killers sitting in a circle, listening to the album intently, taking pages upon pages of notes.

There’s a few songs that I find it hard to get through based on especially sappy lyrical content, such as the aforementioned single. And I probably won’t be blasting this one much in the coming months. But I say with no dismissive cliché intended: that’s just me. Years Of Refusal is still a good album.

Years Of Refusal
February 17, 2009
Lost Highway

1. Something Is Squeezing My Skull
2. Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed
3. Black Cloud
4. I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris
5. All You Need Is Me
6. When Last I Spoke To Carol
7. That’s How People Grow Up
8. One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell
9. It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore
10. You Were Good In Your Time
11. Sorry Doesn’t Help
12. I’m OK By Myself