Music Review: Johnny Marr, The Messenger

By Cait Brennan

“Hear me, the wonder of it,” Johnny Marr sings on “The Right Thing Right,” the opening track of his new solo album The Messenger. Marr essentially invented ’80s Britpop with The Smiths, a band whose hallmarks featured Marr’s blazing melodic runs and (oh god let’s just get it over with) jangling guitars, serving as the perfect counterpoint to those literate, mannered, melancholic lyrics from an obscure vocalist whose name time has sadly forgotten.

In the intervening years, as The Smiths’ influence has grown to legend, countless guitarists have reproduced that iconic sound with near-religious devotion. Everybody, it seems, but Marr himself, who often seemingly took pains to play like somebody, anybody other than that guy on The Smiths records. While Morrissey rose to new heights as a writ-large, Nicholas Ray CinemaScope version of himself, Marr left it all behind, blazing an exhaustive, exhausting trail through new sounds and new identities that would wear out Richard Kimble.

Marr was in the Pretenders. He was in The The. He was in a band with that guy from New Order (Electronic). He played on a bunch of Pet Shop Boys records. Somehow, unless I dreamed this, he was in Modest Mouse. And finally, perhaps even fatefully, he was even in The Cribs for a bit, and the boundless energy and big indie guitar hooks of Wakefield’s finest may have sparked a thought in Marr that the previous two decades didn’t: hey, hold on a minute, I invented this shit.

Whatever the motivation, it’s brought Johnny Marr full circle. The 12 tracks on The Messenger ring out with undeniable guitar heroics that both draw on and add to his considerable legend. There are some great songs here: “I Want The Heart Beat” has an anxious riff and driving rhythm that would be quite at home next to “What Difference Does It Make”; “Upstarts,” “Lockdown,” and “European Me” are all earworm-worthy tunes that will demand multiple listenings; “Say Demesne” is a lovely, sweeping, swirling ballad; “Generate! Generate!” will make you think the Daleks have formed a post punk band.

While Marr’s voice could never have worked for the nuance and depths reached by his mercurial ex-partner, it’s kind of crazy that this is only his second real lead vocal performance (the first came on Johnny Marr and the Healers’ uneven 2003 album, Boomslang). A more ambitious, egocentric, or possibly insane lead singer would demand more and push farther, but Marr has got a solid rock voice (a bit more Stone Roses than “Still Ill”) and the material here is a perfect fit.

The bittersweet “New Town Velocity” vividly recalls The Queen Is Dead and shows that Moz never had a monopoly on melancholy. “Word Start Attack” punctuates the set with a frenetic, angular Jaguar barrage that bodes well for the future. On The Messenger, Johnny Marr is front and center, and it suits him.

The Messenger was released February 26 by Sire/ADA and is available to order from the Johnny Marr website.

Tour Dates:
April 11: Las Vegas NV, The Cosmopolitan: The Pool w/ New Order
April 12: Indio CA, Coachella, Empire Polo Fields
April 13: San Francisco CA, Fillmore
April 15: Seattle WA, Neumos
April 16: Portland OR, Aladdin Theater
April 18: Santa Barbara CA, County Bowl w/ New Order
April 19: Indio CA, Coachella, Empire Polo Fields
April 21: Denver CO, Gothic Theatre
April 22: Omaha NE, The Waiting Room
April 23: Minneapolis MN, Varsity Theater
April 25: Chicago IL, Metro
April 26: Detroit MI, Magic Stick
April 27: Toronto ON Canada, Phoenix
April 29: Washington DC, 9.30 Club
April 30: Philadelphia PA, Trocadero
May 2: New York NY, Irving Plaza
May 3: Brooklyn NY, Music Hall Of Williamsburg
May 4: Boston MA, Paradise Rock Club