I used to be the type of Morrissey fan, who in my teens believed that his work with the Smiths was his highest pillar. As I grew older, I also grew to genuinely love most of his solo stuff. Granted with Morrissey, there are always a few odd songs here and there that do not apply to anything really (not even the grand subject of ambiguity that Morrissey so loves). To illustrate my point, most songs on Kill Uncle, carry little weight in my pocket.

I find that over the years, Morrissey likes to generalize or wax poetic on subjects he knows little about. Though it is well and good to discuss "important, critical issues," I also find that Morrissey is not the one known to deliver them. When we think of the great caliber that is Morrissey, we think of specific songs that make us clutch our hearts and weep, purely because we identify with them so extremely.

The sad thing about You Are the Quarry, is that it has none of these songs. When we give rave reviews of this album, I believe we are forgetting how critically potent his songs from the past are. To compare the two, YATQ seems nothing but a flop album. Considering that Morrissey fans have had little new material over the past 7 years, it is disappointing to discover that the album delivered sounded merely manufactured; not full of the heart that Morrissey songs generally wane. All of the songs sound glossed over, almost manufactured in a pop factory. Though the songs sound good, they do not bear the meaning that other stellar songs do, such as "I Know It's Over," "Now My Heart is Full," "Late Night Maudlin Street." These songs capture well the essence of Morrissey songs. They encapsulate large themes like, how it feels to be lonely, or the encroaching feeling of death, also the sound of these songs has a very genuine feel.

Though I do like the sound on YATQ, I must admit that it does not have that same feel. The music, which is stellar albeit very poppy, and the lyrics, seem to not hold up to Morrissey's previous talented career. To sum up my point best "it says nothing to me about my life ..."

When the dust settles and the marketing machine is parked in the Sanctuary garage, "You are the Quarry" will be remembered as Morrissey's most disappointing album ever. That was an unbiased, truthful critique, as much as I hate to admit it. This is the beginning of the end for Morrissey.

except that I don't think the music is that bad. I mean if "America is not the World" had different lyrics it could be a really beautiful song.

it's the stand out track for me.
are all the people bashing it overweight patriotic Americans? i have a feeling they are.

I know Michael from seeing him around town at gigs. I think the last time I saw him he had on a Marilyn Manson t-shirt? and shabby shabby shoes!
I'll never forget the shoes, they were almost alive!
I'll see if I can dig up a picture!

please people don't think Calgary speaks for all of Canada. They are just discovering "Your Arsenal " :P

shyness is different from being antisocial. Article after article, interview after interview, I hear the same things. Some of that has to do with the laziness of the reporters, some of it has to do with the reportee. Okay, okay. Do we all understand now? Morrissey (like Greta Garbo) just "vants to be alone."

The last Morrissey song to really stir me emotionally was Jack the Ripper. I think Morrissey has written many interesting songs since, but that was the last one to really grab me. When answering the question, "Why?" I inescapably come round to another question: "Can Morrissey's expressions of his distaste for the company of other people *not* have an effect on his lyrics and on the way his audience (which *has* to be counted among the people Morrissey states he just doesn't like) perceives these lyrics? I think not.

I went back to examine the lyrics from The Smiths' work. Interestingly, there is (especially among the earliest works) a definite thematic consistency that is sadly missing from many (though, not all) later solo works. The theme is intimacy. One of the various ways I see intimacy expressed in The Smiths' lyrcs is through "intimate commands".

Early Smiths songs are rich with commands to the audience or commands to songs' characters, with whom the audience can and would easily and happily identify.

Commands requesting emotional intimacy:
"Come out and find the one that you love and who loves you." "give in to lust, give up to lust" "let's go where we're happy" "send me the pillow...the one that you dream on" "learn to love me" "ask me; I won't say no"

Commands requesting physical intimacy.
"slap me on the patio" "take me when you go" "climb up on my knee, sonny boy" "take my hand and off we stride" "stay on my arm, you little charmer" "come round" "meet me in the alley by the railway station" "take me out tonight"

Commands requesting acknowledgment/obedience (people often feel most comfortable issuing commands/admonitions to those close to them).
"so let it be known" "shut your mouth" "keep me in mind" "don't plagiarise or take on loan" "throw your homework onto the fire" "unite and take over" "don't blame the sweet and tender hooligan" "burn down the disco" "don't forget the songs that made you cry".

These latter types of commands are the kind issued by venerable leaders to their charges. These kinds of leaders issue even tough commands because they care about their charges (and the organization that they collectively form). Likewise, the charges accept and embrace these commands because they respect and care for their leaders and the organization.

Most of the command voice still used in Morrissey's recent lyrical works are less effectual because how can we--his once intimately engaged audience--feel about him the way we once did when now he claims to not like people...including us?! Furthermore, we cannot (or should not) respect that about which we haven't a clue (as suggested in "How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel). That Morrissey thinks that no one (audience included) understands him is one thing, but he also offers no clues as to how me might correct our "crazy", "insane" thinking.

By offering no helpful suggestions, he is essentailly saying he doesn't care for us to understand him, meaning that he cannot be the same venerable commander he once was. If we think we admire our leader, we *are* in fact crazy to do so, because these feelings are no longer warranted or welcome.

Surfacely, "crash into my arms; I want you" from "Jack the Ripper" evokes all of the former Smiths intimacy with its command for physical contact, but how empty this request seems when balanced against his repeated statements that he doesn't like people!

2. Intimate Observations:
While some people may relish compliments or observations from anyone, I think most people crave intimate observations and compliments from those who we think know/understand us best. Not only are these types of intim

Sorry, I had posted this in the wrong place with my first attempt ...

Morrissey
You Are the Quarry
[Attack; 2004]
Rating: 8.9
The now-forgotten British author Horace Vachell introduced polo to the Pacific Coast when he relocated to Southern California in 1882. Purchasing a large cattle ranch near Arroyo Grande, which he renamed Tally-Ho, Vachell bred ponies and even socialized in the costume of the sport. His greatest acclaim came from the 1905 novel The Hill, an aristocratic Icarus fable in which the son of a Liverpudlian merchant attends the elite Harrow boarding school, rising to cricket prominence before his evitable downfall and dismissal due to class difference. On his adopted home Vachell wrote, "In addition to the family fool, the Englishman to be found on the Pacific Slope include the parson's son, the fortune teller, the moral idiot, the remittance man, and the sportsman."

One could lob three of those labels at Steven Morrissey, the most unremittingly Albion presence in modern Los Angeles, but he remains an entirely unique breed of Englishman in home or Hollywood. Bitter, witty, hypocritical, contradictory, self-aware, sardonic, and nostalgic, Morrissey's persona-- in person, or in song-- is never one-dimensional or quickly read. Consider the "I" in his songs to represent "Morrissey" with peril.

The media and his audience have consistently misinterpreted Morrissey's lyrics and statements. Everyone from the Warlock Pinchers to the Windsors levied opinions at his persona. The trend continues with You Are the Quarry. The record is not an anti-American treatise, an encomium to England, an epistolary revelation, or even a bold comeback, and magazines who claim such are lazy and reading off the kit. Laden with brilliant contradictions, press baiting rouse, dark comedy, and real human complexity, You Are the Quarry simply stands as the most entertaining and lushly melodic work of Morrissey's solo career, one of the most singular figures in Western pop culture from the last 20 years.

In an epitomatory 1989 interview with Greenscene Magazine, Morrissey castigated those in chinchilla coats. "It's disgusting. They're disgusting," he spat. "If I see someone wearing fur I ask them to take it out of view." In the same interview, he pointed out that synthetic shoes "look silly" and confessed to wearing leather footwear, as there's "no sensible alternative." The first scenario seems unlikely and makes for a comedic envisioning (At the Savoy: "Excuse me, madam, but that rabbit shawl must be taken out of public view"), while the second statement reiterates that Morrissey never forsakes his role as photo-ready icon and dapper fashionist for a few cows.

Similarly, when he puts his hands on the hips of Liverpool and Hull to slowdance with England in "Come Back to Camden", the lyrics should be taken with the whole of the Winsford Rock salt mine. Obviously, a "discoloured dark brown staircase," a "slate grey Victorian sky," and "the taste of the Thames" fail to paint a whimsical postcard of home. Even those who've never choked for air while riding the 15 down Fleet Street can read the sarcasm without a spider map. Yet those weeping synthetic strings (violins and cellos use catgut and horsehair, by the way) flash "I miss you" in garish American neon.

When Morrissey humorously mocks Americans with, "You wonder why in Estonia they say, 'Hey, you, big fat pig, you fat pig,'" we laugh because most Americans don't know what Estonia is, let alone where it lies on the Baltic; fat Americans travel to Tucson not Talinn. Each of You Are the Quarry's 12 songs contains an equally delicious line. In "Let Me Kiss You", which incidentally features the most romantically melodic quasi-Marr guitar, Morrissey pulls the mask off an ostensible smooching ballad with the desperate gob of, "And then you open your eyes and you see someone you physically despise but my heart is open." Those artificial maudlin strings that sweep back in afterwards seem like the most appropriately feeble yet

Eep. That review was harsh. But it seems to me that this fellow never really liked Morrissey in the first place, and therefore his opinion is biased. Oh well. I don't give a shit.

On another note; I have just an overall observation of what I've been reading here lately:

It aggrivates me when people are constantly hoping that each new Morrissey song captures emotions that The Smiths' songs did oh-so long ago. Well, hmm... Morrissey has gotten older and has experienced more. Change and (in)difference comes with age. Does he throw around some similar topics? Of course, because he has a hard time letting go of the things that have troubled him in the past. But should we, his harshest critics, banish him for doing it or for not doing it enough? No. I'm embracing this album; I like this album alot. It isn't The Smiths. It isn't his earlier solo work. It is You are the Quarry. And that is that. I believe other people have held a similar sentiment, but I just wanted to share mine as well.