Better than many expected and much better than many will admit, Morrissey’s new album, Make-Up is a Lie, enticingly combines autobiography and epochal love letter. While his unique and expected ‘Stressford’ grammar of death and desolation remains, it is now drawn into dialogue with the cultural code of Beat poetry and gonzo journalism of his youth.
Morrissey’s attention is turned firmly to the formative figures of his neglected youth. ‘The Night Pop Dropped’ for instance, wonders “how empty our lives would be” without the mercurial David Bowie. ‘Amazona,’ a Roxy Music cover, pays tribute to another 70s hero. Though missing Bryan Ferry’s louche and debonaire charm, Morrissey’s untinctured vocals function with the distilled instrumentals, as an unleashed guitar solo screechingly pulls the listener “through the mirror”.
A stand-out song and the most explicitly (auto)biographical on the album, ‘Lester Bangs’ mourns the titular editor of the ’70s musical magazine, Creem. Ever the tortured poet, Bangs is shown stifled by substance abuse, indolence, and alcoholism. A folksy travis-picked guitar, weeping saxophone, and humming bass light an ethereal candle in Lester’s “basement of despair,” his drowned genius re-illuminated behind a catchy sophisti-pop facade.
Like brew on Bangs’ carpet, Beat imagery seeps through and marks almost every fibre of the album. The electric echoes of the late Ginsberg and his Velocity of Money howl through ‘Kerching Kerching’ as Morrissey laments the corruption of youth in the capitalist rat race. In ‘Boulevard’ and ‘Many Icebergs Ago,’ the ugly twin of Beat brilliance, excess, rears its head, mounting instrumentals mimicking the joint crescendo of intoxication and loathing.
While departing from these themes, ‘Make-Up is a Lie,’ ‘Notre Dame,’ as well as ‘Headache,’ ‘Zoom Zoom the Little Boy,’ and ‘You’re Right, it’s Time’ are each melodious exercises in their own rights. Whether dominated by bouncy guitar (and even electrical sitar) riffs or shadowy chamber pop elements, these songs still thrive instrumentally. In traditional lyrical complement, Morrissey rues hidden terrors, nature’s destruction, rhythmic wedding dirges, and decaying affection.
Closing the album, ‘The Monsters of Pig Alley’ narrates the tragedy of a young star wriggling loose from loving parents. Emptied by the vacuum of fatal fame, he dies, a lonely telephone ringing the futile cries of desperate disowned parents in his vacant room. With its final postulation “the higher you climb, the less you find,” the album’s message climbs back into its chamber, resealed until the next listen.
“*JUST ANNOUNCED* We will be hosting Morissey at our beautiful Plaza Theatre venue on May 13! Tickets on sale next Friday – stay tuned! #ItsAllGoodEP #ElPaso” by VisitElPaso is licensed under CC BY 2.0.