Morrissey: Hovet, Stockholm review in DN
Fredrik Strage (big Moz fan) reviews last nights' gig in Stockholm in DN, Swedens biggest quality broadsheet. He gives it a 4 out of 5:
http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konsertrecensioner/morrissey-hovet-stockholm/
Pretty horrible Google translation here (I'm too tired to correct it):
At the end of the show, Morrissey rips off his shirt and throws it into the crowd. Since he lingers just left the scene in a few seconds, as if he wanted to get his torso in conjunction with the perfect rock bodies that Iggy Pop. But he wants anyway, after recent years of cancer treatments, lung infections and food poisoning, that his fifty-year-old indie body is in decent shape.
Admirers worry that he does not have the energy to tour for long. The question is if he can not tour. Get performers live up so much in the spotlight. He shoots out his perfectly sculpted superhero chin, close your eyes during the bushy eyebrows and shape their thin lips into a smug smile. Before the concert shown clips of some of his role models, including Frenchman Charles Aznavour who still tours, ninety years old. The fact that Morrissey would hold on as long does not feel unreasonably a good night like this.
"Swedish: Swedish: Swedish!" roars he cryptically after making their entrance with five musicians. They pull off a slamrig version of "The Queen Is Dead," one of four songs that played from his former band The Smiths. Then they throw themselves into the bombastic masterpiece "Speedway". Morrissey whips the microphone cord like a lion tamer and starts, in an art break, singing the forgotten glam rock breaker Jobriaths "Street Corner Love" (like the opera pieces of Klaus Nomi, played before and after the gig, a tribute to a dead gayikon).
Next song will be new "Staircase at the university", a hilarious latino rock song with cute morbid text about exam stress leading to suicide - a result of "How Soon Is Now", Smith hit song that should be broken played but becomes overwhelming suggestive when Morrissey shoulders his parade role: the defiant teenager who goes to the disco, stands on its own, go home and want to die. Towards the end he collapses in blood red light.
So far, the concert perfectly. Towards the middle lagging it slightly, most of the "World peace is none of your business", the leisurely title track from the latest album where Morrissey urges us not to vote because politicians lie - a setting that does not feel particularly enlightened when he points out that only idiots watch on the news. Morrissey has never been a great thinker (and his unwillingness to see things from perspectives other than their own has produced several brilliant songs) but when he saw an unnamed charity disc (probably the remake of "Do They Know It's Christmas?") He sounds like a grumpy hubby.
It's easy to forgive the whining when he offers piano ballad "Asleep" or the sparkling melancholic "One of our own". His vocal technique never ceases to fascinate: languorous light tones are followed by robust grunts. Sometimes he draws out the vowels to vomit noises, as if he wanted to pierce it beautiful.
The enigma of his most attractive feature. What does he mean by the pompous "Scandinavia" is nifty but tangential father when he goes from being "bored into a fjord" for wanting to eat the Scandinavian soil? And why he shows a short clip where James Cagney slaps a man and yells: "Ethics? Ethics? I'll show you who's got ethics!"
Is Morrissey angry because we questioned his moral compass when he said racist things about djurplågande Chinese? Animal rights anthem "Meat Is Murder" Anyway, that's a bitch slap in the face to the audience - illustrated by a loathsome movie from slaughterhouses. Towards the end turns Morrissey us back. With his hands clasped behind his head, he stares up at the carnage that get lots of people to look away. It is obviously that he is ethical.
*************
2 more reviews
Kulturbloggen, 3 / 5:
http://kulturbloggen.com/?p=89340
SvD are mostly positive:
http://www.svd.se/kultur/scen/det-later-riktigt-bra-om-morrissey_4101337.svd
