Morrissey, Years Of Refusal

By Hanna

There is a feeling among Morrissey fans that he is alienating them; there is a general disquiet, like the lights turned on in the theatre. Blog posts focus on how Morrissey’s face of arrogance is really showing behind the mask—well, more than usual, I mean.

Several things seem to be responsible for this, not the least of which is the discouraging aesthetic of honesty and realness this album has going on. First, there were the naked pictures (in themselves discouraging), and then the album itself, which has a rock feel musically, and a penchant for the stripped down, straightforward lyrics the last few Morrissey albums have also contained. Lines like “I’m throwing my arms around Paris/because nobody wants my love” are not the sort of thing fans as loyal as Morrissey’s want to hear.

And overall, the album is. . . well, depressing. Like everyone who really listens to his music will know, Morrissey’s lyrics are rarely actually depressing, they’re more often pungent, satirical, or lighthearted. But there is none of that here. The subjects are undeniably maudlin. “Something Is Squeezing My Skull” is apparently about how healing from mental problems brings along its own problems, and lists the substances of anti-anxiety and depression medication, sounding musically like “Boy Racer.” “Black Cloud,” “I’m OK By Myself,” “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore,” and “Sorry Doesn’t Help” all deal with rejection and alienation from a loved one. “I’m throwing my arms around Paris” is slightly more like the tunes on the Ringleader Of The Tormentors and You Are The Quarry albums, with their city references and cheerful guitars. Bizarrely, “That’s How People Grow Up” sounds like one of Rammstein’s commercial songs.

Several of the songs deal with the subject of aging, leaving, and death, most notably “You Were Good In Your Time” and “One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell.” This seems to have provoked Morrissey fans. It’s not as if he has not sung about his own status in music before, however; it’s what I saw one fan describe as “the Rubber Ring effect.” But when combined with Morrissey’s advancing age, his threats of actually leaving the music business, and the decades-long attachment many of his fans have, it’s now seen mostly as alienating and insulting, like the attention whoring post of a blogger threatening to stop writing when they don’t get enough comments.

Musically the album relies heavily on Morrissey’s live band, focusing on a rock sound without much production and featuring arrangements from 50s rockabilly and crooners. People have pointed out this means his vocal range is limited as a result and this is definitely true. Furthermore, many of the songs link back musically to his slightly grungier (if anything Morrissey did could ever be called grungy) mid-90s albums. However, while albums from his “years of refusal” such as Southpaw Grammar, Your Arsenal, Vauxhall and I (and yes, Maladjusted) had a penchant for taking the focus off the Morrissey character and fixing the gaze on the characters he is surrounded with—a certain class of underworldly yet everyday people—the focus is firmly on the self on this album. The only songs that don’t sound this way are “Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbank” and “When Last I Spoke To Carol” with their camp, kitchen-sink-melodrama lyrics and arrangements more intricate than the rest of the album.

On the whole, however, like most other bands right now, Morrissey has traded the satirical gaze for the introspective one, even if he does not take it into a historical or folksy direction like others. This similarity to the older albums could be a look into the past—the less successful one—or just a look at the person and the character Morrissey has built of himself. It could be seen as just as neo-traditionalist as Balkan folkpop bands or the new singer/songwriters, in that it never departs from the safest Morrissey subjects: self-doubt, self-hate, self-berating, memories, and dreams, but with the edge of the bitterness and blackness of those late 90s albums.

It might be the Zeitgeist that has removed satire from most pop culture, especially the camp satire that is a part of glam and the gay culture Morrissey has always affected. As RuPaul said as part of the promotion for RuPaul’s Drag Race: the past few years have not been kind to gay culture and drag culture. It’s strange to see Morrissey so in tune with the mainstream rather than the opposite as he runs forward with his new sincerity. On the other hand, at times the extreme introspection turns into a parody of the character Morrissey has been portraying since The Smiths broke up, into a dark panto villain version of the idol. This, along with his attention whoring, could very well alienate him far enough from his fans to return to his mid-90s obscurity and the social commentary that went with it, as this album seems to signal.