Hey I'm just as hardcore ov a Smiths/Morrissey fan as the next, well maybe a litto bit more ov one I suppose. But after seeing Johnny Marr& The Healers play in L.A the last 2nights I've no complains. Goodun Johnny Boomslang sounds fuckin MEGA!! Peace my brother.

"So, what I'm trying to say, is, yes, I was an absolute baby/crybaby when I broke up the greatest band in the history of the world. I was 24 and imptetuous, had no idea what I was doing, haven't broken the gravity of mediocrity since, and am failing miserably in my efforts to look like Noel Gallagher. Also, the more I try to write music that doesn't sound like The Smiths, the worse my songs and my legacy becomes, and yes, I would do anything to get back together with Morrissey."

Johnny talks like he is ashamed of having been in The Smiths. However, the more he tries to belittle his past, the more we are given access to his insurmountable guilt about his horrible decision made years ago.

Message to Johnny: It's okay to admit you were wrong. That is the first step in moving on...

"Some people are still crying that we broke up, but I'm not," he says. ", don't worry, i'm not crying either.....in any case i'd hate seeing my favorite band looking like U2 or something alike 15 years later....those 5 years were fabulous...let's leave it like that...it's good you're not crying, Jhonny....i'm sure Mozzer is not, either.....

The Guardian

"Marr's vocals are in tune, but are also devoid of character. This is bad news when your lyrics come from the Gallagher School of Meaningless Twaddle (school motto: "Will this do?"). "

Alexis Petridis

full review [guardian.co.uk]

Independent on Sunday

ROCK BY NUMBERS 2 stars (from 5)

If you believe, as I do, that The Smiths were the greatest band who ever lived, it's hard to accept that a key member could make a record as lacklustre as Boomslang. Johnny Marr's once-shimmering fretwork has solidified into turgid blues-rock. He's no singer, and he's no lyricist: it's all cliched rock-ese. It's proof that even a musician as talented as Marr would never have made it without a lyricist as extraordinary as Morrissey. In 20 years, the boy Johnny has come from giving the world something it needed badly to giving it something it's got more than enough of.
Simon Price

The Sunday Telegraph

Terrible things are being written about Johnny Marr's first solo album and you wonder whether this owes more to inflated expectation, or pique that he never made enough Smiths records, or spite that his bass player is from Kula Shaker and his drummer is Ringo Starr's boy Zak. But it's not nearly as bad as they say. Maybe the vocals are a bit underpowered, the lyrics are certainly complete twaddle ('I'm all new/kinda know it somehow/whirling around') and stylistically it's stuck somewhere between the shoegazing and baggy eras. But what exactly were people expecting: hip-hop- and country~infused gabba? The point, surely, is that it contains lots of nice guitary bits sounding very like Johnny Marr (the opener is redolent of What Difference Does It Make?), mellow, hippyish tunes and a general air of stoner rusticity which refugees from the late Smiths/Stone Roses era will find very pleasing.
James Delingpole

The Times

Marr has taken longer than most guitar heroes to get around to singing, yet his bluesy, weatherbeaten vocals impress. The music is rather fine too and while the album contains enough echoes of his former band to render Smiths diehards unusually cheerful, it actually has more in common with the funky, Day-Glo sound of the Stone Roses. The single, Bangin' On, a more rudimentary take on the Electronic (the band in which Marr plays with New Order's Bernard Sumner) sound, is particularly effective. Sorry Morrissey, but that reunion looks even further away. (4/5)
Mark Sutherland

The Sunday Times

DOOMED to be identified as cogenius in one of the greatest bands of all time, Johnny Marr has cut a rather forlorn figure since disbanding the Smiths. As a gun for hire, he has worked with Bryan Ferry, The The, Beth Orton and Bernard Sumner, among others. With Boomslang, Marr finally sounds relaxed enough to enjoy himself on his own terms (his confident if unremarkable vocals attest to that), and forget about the weight of history. The bad news, though, is that Marr, like so many other Brit-rock leviathans (see also Ashcroft, R; Gallagher, N; Squire, J; et al), has come under the spell of the JooJoo man: for Boomslang sounds almost entirely (Down on the Corner and Another are lovely exceptions) like those cringe-making jamming sessions that open Later with Jools Holland. And, as Mozza once put it (albeit in another context): "That joke isn't funny anymore." One star
Dan Cairns

The Independent

Link to a review [independent.co.uk]
by Andy Gill.

It was odd to site CCR as a primary source for How Soon is Now. Isn't it widely understood to be Bo Diddley(more of an elderstatesman than say, Fogerty) and the Pretenders reshaped thorugh a filter of wank-free feedback?

Talent is one thing, self-centered all knowing in it's presentation to self but what does that give? Johnny has all this, but his common ground becomes lost in appearant pretention of a declaration of self. Noble as it may be, it does not help me, the one looking for commmon ground with him as a person. I felt that when he shared his talent with the Noble effort of Morrissey's honesty. Talent without selflessness rings hollow to those who have heard and seen. We still love him but we must admit, its slightly less without him having a heart not just "talent".