Likewise
Your post title made me laugh, but yeah, it's true. I don't know if those bland [to my ear] leaks dramatically lowered my expectations, but the sound is miraculous, so deft! In the Future When All's Well... it sounds like a waterfall.
To me it's as though Morrissey spent the past few years listening to some awfully good music, and in the years since he wrote Quarry, music has indeed been better than usual! You Are the Quarry sounded like a record that was written during a period when there wasn't much going on in music, do you know what I mean? This exists much more in cotext. It's wonderful.
The lyrics - I don't know why I find his approach weirdly novel? They often seem deliberately cumbersome, like 'there is no such thing in life as normal'. I have to say that after hanging on through 'there is no such thing in life as...', I'm rather disappointed it's just 'normal'? Yeah, OK, it's a rather obvious point to take so long making it? And with a children's choir?
But at the same time, it has a narrative in a way that You Are the Quarry didn't have at all. The songs are so dense and obviously interrelated. I could say something about Proust or whatever, but I'll just say even Hot Fuss by The Killers is enjoyable in that aspect. The thematic coherence is fantastic, so engaging.
'I've never felt better' - I know! I didn't know I would get to hear it so soon!! It's so GOOD!!
love, math+