Morrissey
(Lost Highway)
Years Of Refusal is a loud, bitter, mean-spirited album. While Morrissey serves up plenty of his trademark melodrama and lovelorn self-pity, plenty of his aphoristic bon mots and plenty of his peerless soaring and crooning vocals, for much of the album, he directs his ire and bile towards unfortunate victims of his withering wit. The whole thing buzzes and crackles with glammy guitars and venomous anger.
Whereas 2004's excellent You Are The Quarry dealt in social criticism and 2006's Ringleader Of The Tormentors verged on self-parody, this time it's personal. Morrissey has always felt loveless, but at his best he's blamed everyone: lovers for rejecting him, himself for his unlovable character, the world for being antithetical to love in general and gay love in particular. But with a few exceptions, most notably the wonderful, lilting "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" ("because only stone and steel accept my love"), Years Of Refusal dwells on rejecting the one who rejected him. It's essentially an unrepentant, unforgiving break-up album.
Like Quarry, Refusal was produced by Jerry Finn, and it hurtles from one anthemic track to the next, with Morrissey's longtime touring guitarists Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte leading the charge. The weighty guitar chords and crashing drums steamroll any sense of potential irony in lines like "This might surprise you, but I'm OK by myself, and I don't need you or your morality to save me" or "It's not your birthday anymore; there's no need to be kind to you." In the past, those lines could have seemed to pass judgment on the speaker by acknowledging his emotional excess or undermining his lack of culpability. Here, they are purely hateful.
Which isn't always a bad thing: "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore" is glorious, partly because it grows into its broad choruses gradually and partly because Morrissey sings it with such obvious relish. "I'm OK By Myself," on the other hand, is just heavy-handed.
"I was wasting my life always thinking about myself," Morrissey states baldly in "That's How People Grow Up." But he knows he's made a career about thinking about himself, turning himself into a character beloved by legions. With little of the tempering irony or self-deprecation that his best work-as a solo artist or especially with the Smiths-allows, Years Of Refusal can seem disingenuous and overstated.
Of course, Morrissey is never simple and always self-aware, and on "One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell" he includes a keynote that acknowledges the risks of the vitriol that dominates the album: "Always be careful when you abuse the one you love." But even that line sounds like a threat.
Standout Tracks: "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore," "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" STEVE KLINGE
