ROTT (Amazon Stream)

http://www.morrissey-solo.com/discuss/index.cgi?re ad=313714

My opinions of the album Track by track

I will see you in far off places: Great pop song. I like the middle-eastern feel.

Dear God Please Help Me: Great music, great singing, horrendous lyrics (contains the infamous "kegs between the legs" lyric). I will admit, however, that I did not cringe when I heard the lyric in the context of the song. It sounded a bit tongue in cheek. The song has a gospel music feel to it.

You have killed me: Yes, I still like it, and it continues to grow on me.

The youngest was the most loved: In a word, underwhelming

In the future when all is well: I like it. Sounds like it could be a single, although not as good as fotgtd or ibeh.

The father that must be killed: somehow Reminds me of teenage dad on his estate (was that the name of it?). The two songs are equally good (read: equally not great)

Life is a Pigsty: Looks to be the best song on the album, both lyrically and musically. I like the quality of Morrissey's voice on this song.

I'll never be anybody's hero: I love this song. classic morrissey methinks. Might be a bit too slow tempo for a single, but I think its one of the stronger songs on the album. His voice goes falsetto a lot on this one.

On the streets I ran: A great song. Lyrically I like it a lot, although I think the music is a bit pedestrian (but catchy). Could possibly be a single.

To me you are a work of art: A sweet song. I like the violins. Great music and good lyrics.

I just want to see the boy happy: An okay song. I don't like how he frames the lyrics...almost like it was a stretch to fit the lyrics to the music or vice versa. What else can I say.

At Last I am Born: Strange. I don't know what to think about this one yet. Not a pop song. A bit repetitive. It has kind of a marching song feel to it.

Overall, I think the album is an huge improvement over You are the Quarry. The production is clearly better, and as a whole the songs are much better, although none of them are as poppy as fotgtd or ibeh. A solid album, more consistent than YATQ and more of what I might expect from Morrissey. Long titles though!

veradicere

anyone else just get this?

Sorry, but this is another mediocre effort, not fit to touch the hem of Vauxhall's garment.

He really needs new musicians.

Is it anything like 'Your Arsenal'? That's my current favourite of his repertoire. Many are saying ROTT has a glam rock influence, and if that's the case (myxomatosis aside) I'll be a very happy bunny.
Plus, is this offer only on amazon.com? I've ordered from the uk site, where intrestingly enough someone has put in their 'customer review' bit that they've cancelled their order due to comments Moz made about animal rights. That made me laugh; clearly a 'fan' who never bothered to read one iota of information about Morrissey before now.

It's a really good album. I've heard it three times. I'm going to listen to it in the car next. It may even be a great album.

All the people slagging it off on first listen are those too thick to understand how to judge an album. It's knee jerk reactions combined with a desire to be clever. I predict, much to your chagrin, this album will be near the top in all the end of year lists.

Tracks like The Youngest Was the Most Loved and In the Future have me fluttering. Moz is BACK in Southpaw style fury. Thanks be to god.

I pre-ordered the album, which is a great option to have by amazon.com. Then, I was a happy little lamb, already on the third track of the bonus list, when I clicked on "library" from the Windows Media Player and pum! The locker site was gone. I signed back into it, clicked on "listen now", but the songs didn't come back again. Am I dreaming this bonus existed until April 12, or do you actually get to listen to it only once? I hope this you're-a-sucker feeling goes away, and that I'll have the pleasure of listening to the other songs of the album. Did this digital slip happen to anyone else here?

The album is growing on me by every listen.
It's probably not the best album, but a valid one indeed, and it makes Quarry (fotunately)bleaken..

Can we hear it ? Is there anywhere to go ?

I am in Canada and Amazon.ca doesn't offer this feature. How long for some mp3's ???

I promise I'll still buy it.

- Parnell

Accually, w/ each listen to this 'jagged' masterpiece - Quarry's 'blandness' irritates me less and less. Simply because it is now just a chapter in - and not the conclusion of the story.
ROTT is a fans album there is no doubt. For those like myself who are initially frustrated by tracks 1-4 and go racing toward the the back half to find the 'diamonds in the rough' the 'roses among the thorns' - you won't be dissapointed. TMYAWOA with it's "ha-a-a-a-ad" kept me up very late, and INBAHN just tops everything in my opinion.

I'm waiting till I can put this in the cd player at my house and listen to it in surround sound - not on my stupid computer speakers.

This album is FAR superior to the "middle of the road, blandish" Quarry. Its Moz back to his best and far better produced. Does anyone else feel a bit naughty though listening/downloading this? I do....saying that, I've kept the bloke very comfy over the past 15 years... saying that, I will buy it when released... saying that, I'll probably wait till the platinum version is released instead of being fucked over like I got when buying the first press of Quarry. Roll on the tour, I'm seeing him in Leeds and at the Palladium :)

honestly, if it was Sanctuary's storng desire that the album not be leaked before the release then making this preview deal with amazon was about the stupidest move ever. of course it was going to be copied and spread over the internet- its taken all of a day for everyone on here to hav downloaded it.

and, while withholding my final/overall judgement, id really think theyd hav been better off keeping it underwraps till the release. while iam personally likely to end up falling on the lov side, ican say with much certainty that many will fall on the exact opposite side. the album is a divider forsure- a challenging listen- and album sales would hav benefited from blind/deaf sales. now everyone will hav formed their opinions long before the release and many im sure will take a pass- even longtime Moz "fans". idoubt the album will attract many new faces either- its juste too odd, too Moz.

The single is fabulous, and unfortunately is the best song on the album. This album only emphasises the quality of YATQ - his best solo album. I hoped for something to match it

This is simply a better-publicised Maladjusted

Life is a Pigsty. I heard someone compare it to Bohemian Rhapsbody in terms of scope. Bollocks. Boring song.

They're all boring apart from tracks 3 and 4. And track 4 is only good because of the added breadth of kids are singing on it.

Jesus - on Song for Europe last night, Daz won. I voted for Daz. It was the best song. Kids sang on it, and it was better than any song on this album.

I have been a fan of Morrissey since Bona Drag. I'm now reaching the end of my acceptance of also-ran albums.

Where are all the Johnny Marr fans coming from all of a sudden? It must be that time of year, I guess.

Anyway, this album has really surprised me. At first the reviews praised it and then we started seeing harsh reviews. Ringleader is absolutely fantastic -- it is much better than the Quarry.

I love The Youngest Was The Most Loved, and everything else is close to excellent. You Have Killed Me keeps growing on me and Dear God... is getting better and better everytime I hear it.

I can't wait to hear the B-Sides!

Another Masterpiece. The albums strong progression is outstanding. Lyrics that once again make you ponder existance. The music is haunting and powerful with that Orchestral feel. I'm in awe. This will be the show of 2006 and I think this album will be one that holds it's place well in the world of MOZ

CD Singles Tracks

CD1
Good Looking Man About Town

CD2
I knew I was Next
Human Being

Anyone know the difference between the Regular and Deluxe editions? Are there different covers?

- i've been buying moz stuff since the first smiths single... this is the first one i won't buy on the day it comes out which i think is a big mistake by the label - it was certainly dumb of sanctuary to leak the album so easily as this... i can listen to the tracks on my ipod and wait until the "special" version with the b-sides that'll inevitably follow... and i am sure i wont be the only one thereby denting the initial high album chart placing they'll look for.
in my opinion - it's better than quarry by a mile, a little better than maladjusted, almost as good as southpaw... lyrically better than the woeful quarry album - except for the frankly cringeworthy kegs/legs combo - not many really great tracks - the beginning of "in the future..." sounds like cigarettes and alcohol by oasis (obviously the visconti/ t.rex filter)... i can imagine playing this in a year or two every now and then and i never, ever play quarry except "first of..." -

Very disappointed! Every album until now has a classic Morrissey song. This album has none. Other than his great vocals in “Dear God” the album sounds like B-side material. I was really hoping that this album would be great. If I had one word to describe the album it would be BORING. I know I’m going to get ripped by some of you. But, listen for yourselves and make your own decision.

Of course, I have purchased the album and I will continue to listen to it, in hopes that it will grow on me. However, there is no song like “Sing Your Life” or “The More you Ignore Me,” songs that instantly caught your attention. This album will be remembered as Morrissey’s low point in his career and I’m afraid to say that it may be his END.

This is the BEST Moz song in a very very long time. I'm curious to see who wrote the music. Very T-Rex glam guitar influence. The lyrics,melody,music all works on this one.

Moz peaks again. Thrice better than Quarry.

are at here [morrissey-solo.com]

glad I went online today to see this link. I didn't think I could go so long without hearing the album and now I've recorded all the windows files.

After the long period of nothing from Moz, we got YATQ and a bunch of really good b-sides. Not too much later we get another well done record, hopefully with even more b-sides. My initial impression with this record is I will probably like it just as much as any other album. A few of the tracks are underwhelming, hearing Dear God, I was expecting so much from all the hype here.

Don't know why there are so many people who hate it, even a mediocre Morrissey song is better than most of what passes for pop these days.

I realize nobody's dying to hear what I think, but since there are so many negative opinions I thought I'd poke my head up and be counted.

I adore the record. I wasn't very impressed by You Have Killed Me or the leaks, but now I understand why everyone is so excited. I didn't think I would particularly like the record. Instead, even the most fawning language fails.

It's so glammy, so DANCEY! And Visconti was right about Morrissey's vocal melodies; they're hypnotic.

Best surprise I've had in forever. I am humbled.

love
math+

Man,
  I did it again. I had to go and give Amazon twenty bucks and for what? Out of all the songs off ROTT, there is only 2 that are even worth talking about. I waited all this time for this rubbish? This is not only Morrissey's lamest effort, but its also one of the biggest pieces of crap-pola that I have ever heard. Its time for Morrissey to GET OFF THE STAGE!!!
  Actually, I didn't hear it yet. I just thought I would mix up this poll and get a few smiles out of some of you readers. See, I can see you smiling in relief right now!
    We,, gotta go and see if Brokeback Grammer, I mean Mountain wins the Oscar for best picture.

i'm sure, like myself, there will be many people who hear/buy the album and find the only decent song is 'life is a pigsty'. it's far too long, but still beats everything else on here.

so middle of the road, such underwhelming musical backing, no good guitar parts to speak of (just a nice bassline on pigsty), no mindblowing special moments which give you goosebumps. i thought Quarry was average, but it's definitely better than this. if i had to rank them, i'd put maladjusted top, then quarry, then this one (if we were to compare the last three albums). this album isn't going to be a big success cos it's too boring and bland.

yes, i'm a real moz fan. no, i dont knee-jerkingly criticise every new release of his, this one just isn't good what can you do, pretend it is?!? good idea!

When Morrissey sings, you don't necessarily hear violins. You hear supernatural disgust, sublime selfishness, pathological vulnerability, aching bones, solemn petulance, a numbed survivor's vituperative testimony to catastrophes that are scarcely distinguishable - but nothing particularly smooth and consoling. Funnily enough, on his latest album, you hear a lot of violins, soaring above kingdoms of the non-living, embracing sad stories twice told, shadowing Morrissey's commitment to thoroughly explaining himself without giving anything away. He must be in love, if only in a hateful sort of way.
Ringleader is the story of a life all his other songs have only hinted at - it has a kind of exhilarating, intimate Blood on the Tracks suddenness the way it appears after years of him never quite out-doing his early classic work and sometimes seemingly trapped inside his own myth. From the day he was born, through the streets of Manchester, out into the mean world of sinister places and demanding people, to the day he never actually died - it's all here. Fans of Morrissey, and maybe a few enemies, will have all their prayers answered - a whole album of songs that rock, drone and swing in the way his best songs - Smiths or not - do between the strangely familiar and the completely unfamiliar. A coherent collection dedicated to love and death, to sex and killing, to gravely arranged copulation, to festering flamboyantly, to having Ennio Morricone add lurid, stately ambience and nudge him to the edge of the epic, to perverse tenderness, to ecstatic despair, to soiled optimism and elaborate pessimism, to a future that ends with a long, long sleep. This is the album where Morrissey tells us - and there are those who've been waiting for this moment for 23 years - that he's 'spreading your legs with mine in between'. It's horribly beautiful.

As if it is us he loves for loving him again, he rewards us with 12 wilfully harrowing songs crowded with verbal brilliance. Twelve songs about ordeals - and love is the greatest ordeal of all for Morrissey, something else that will die - to be endured. Songs with titles like 'Dear God, Please Help Me', 'You Have Killed Me', 'Life is a Pigsty', 'To Me You Are a Work if Art', 'At Last I am Born'.

His existential disarray, his triumphant agony, his harsh fault finding, his pitiless wit - which at times can have the aura on record of stale air being breathed over and over again - is so spectacularly presented by producer Tony Visconti that we end up not just with a Morrissey masterpiece - in some ways The Morrissey Masterpiece - but also a Visconti masterpiece.

As soon as the album begins, the listener is plunged into Bowie's bass-heavy, electrically anxious 'Man Who Sold the World', as if that is a remote, alien country that Morrissey can then sail away from, perhaps in search of something bleaker, perhaps to find the lost continent of Presley.

Visconti promotes him, reasonably enough, as a surreal, cranky pop vaudevillian. As if he considers that Morrissey must surely be kidding when the singer gets particularly truculent, he sticks a load of kids behind him as backing singers. He's not afraid to frame Morrissey as merely a weirdly distracted entertainer, not so much an awkward, slightly shifty rock singer as a sighing, tormented crooner compelled to display his psychic wounds as if the world depends on it. Morrissey has never sung better, not so much soulfully as with an emotional elegance that consistently snaps the icy, burning words to attention.

Visconti treats him as a handsome Latino melodramatist suffering from a kitsch surfeit of imagination as much as a damp, exiled Mancunian miserabilist with a cold tendency to nostalgic self-obsession. Ultimately, Visconti helps transform Morrissey's dogged oddness and phenomenal fussiness into pure magic. Love him or hate him, there's no one better at loving and hating.

is the best Morrissey album yet. I have been listening to it for a week now, and I must confes, it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s much, much better than YATQ.

This is the first Morrissey album that feels like a whole. He sings with an urgency I haven’t heard on many of his solo efforts. All the songs work wonderfully together. Some are strong, some are strange, but they really work together. Morrissey comes full circle on this album. You can hear the golden talent shine through that won us all over in the past.

I am afraid though that this is the best he can do with this band. But enough said.

ROTT 4,5/5

Maybe I am too stupid to see the beauty you are all talking about... I think ROTT is utter crap... his worst album ever.
To me you are a work of art, and I will give you my heart, that's if I hahahahahave one.
Pff, even Robbie Williams can do better than that
His singing is also very bad, he tries to put his emotion too much in the songs and it is becoming a caricature. I have been a fan since the beginning of The Smiths and I have to say: It says nothing to me about my life.
Let us remember the old days...

if moz took "abbey road", "physical graffiti", the smiths' "the queen is dead", every song by gilbert o' sullivan and mixed in the best of paul weller with the genius of ray davies...there would be some asshole saying how moz has lost it. get your hearing checked and listen to rott again, and you will see it is as good as vauxhall any day of the week. moz has matured...so should some of you.

i really think so, first time does not sound very special but everytime i listen to it it grows on me. I think it is very different from everything he´s done before, theres no obvious singles like First of the gang to die but as a whole this could well be if not his best, one of his best solo albums.
I can´t wait to buy it and listen to it in high quality.

I rather put Southpaw on repeat for 24 hrs. and I listened to ROTT about 16 times already! Don't want to insult anyone, but c'mon, maybe he should throw in the towel soon. But yes, I will be crushed like a sardine when he plays in Los Angeles...

http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0GB7L4U52ZJ402J QWUKP9H5JSU

Nowhere near Vauxhall or Bona Drag.

Nowhere near Maladjusted or Southpaw either.

A nice little album, probably better than YATQ. Up there with Your Arsenal. Morrissey's voice is extremely good -- possibly his best singing to date, the music is good in spots, same for the lyrics (although as many have noted, some of his worst lyrics are on this album).

Pigsty is my favorite, but I'm not sure it's the best song if that makes any sense, much the same way I feel about a song like Maudlin Street or Girl Least Likely To.

I don't really want to dwell on age related issues, but I wonder if it has any connection with your ability to appreciate or depreciate ROTT. I don't think many 18-year-olds would appreciate Frank Sinatra or Edith Piaf. Curiously, Piaf was somone Morrisssey admired since a very young age.

Some said ROTT is very like Southpaw, but I think it is the most mixed album in terms of style ever; it has orchestra sounds and harsh guitar ones. I hope more people are able to appreciate both, regardless of their age. I guess these people nostalgic for the Smiths are in fact the teens or early twenties that recently discovered them.

Moz's voice has been consistently changing, along with his music stlye too. Boz's guitar is more and more distinctive and punchy, so for some it might take several times of listening before they can de-smithisize or free themselves from the Morrissey of the past. There is barely no trace of melancholia in Moz's actual voice, there's more like full blown lyricism and openly assumed passion.

do an IP check - it's all the same person. Well, 2 people to be precise.

broken

hey yeah i pre-ordered it. left my desk for a few minutes and began my listening with "Life is a Pigsty". and y'know what, i really like it. and i didn't care for the single or for the middle eastern opening track so i'm not somebody who is totally willing to swallow all things Moz. (oh i love the way that sentence came out.)

"To Me You Are a Work of Art" is on now, and it sounds different. fresh. so i am feeling hopeful.

honestly if half the songs are cool i'll be happy. 6 cool Moz songs are worth trudging through some junk.

Just completed the first listen and I was not overly impressed. While I do think that listening via internet stream helped, I'll give it my fair open after seeing the first two shows next week, my g-friend and I are flying from CA to attend, and then also listening to the album for a few takes after it is released.

I do remember not being overly impressed with Quarry until after a few listens and not I quite enjoy it, especially the B-sides.

Anyone else attending from out of State and or Country?

BeeWee

Hahahahaha!!! yea right! Hahahaha! LOL that was a good one! oh, Boomslang 2 , what a highlight! LOL

Thanks for that joke, man ;)