Morrissey: You are the Quarry

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * *)



With all due respect to our regular writers of letters to the editor, moaning correspondence about the state of the nation- however articulate and beautifully phrased - shouldn't be set to music. Even if it is England.

But that's the effect of the long and allegedly anticipated seventh solo album by Stephen Patrick Morrissey.

The formerly enigmatic Smiths frontman has come out of his LA exile just when quite a few people - Ryan Adams, the Veils, the Strokes - are having fun sounding like his old band.

Trouble is, Morrissey made only one really good solo album since the Smiths' collapse - and one day I'll remember which one. But this self-parodying, self-pitying Union Jack-flying, collection of woefully prosaic lyrics (some making reference to the Smiths-split court case) and mundane melodies hardly inspires one to retrieve it from the garden shed.

The song titles - America is Not the World, I Have Forgiven Jesus, Come Back to Camden, The World is Full of Crashing Bores, How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel - certainly live up to their promised triteness. Musically, rather than the glam/rockabilly swagger which backed his best solo work, this offers an anonymous studio hum which even Bryan Ferry would dismiss as a bit bland.

Yours,

Bored Silly, Albert St.

Label: Attack Records