Chicago Tribune - review of Aragon/Riveira

When he last passed through Chicago, in 1994, the British pop star Morrissey didn't play a note of music and still his fans lined up by the hundreds outside a record store where he was to appear. Some waited for as long as a day for the opportunity to share a few seconds with their idol, to have him sign his name to a piece of paper, a T-shirt, a forehead, or to present him with a bouquet of his beloved gladiolas.

Without a single top-40 hit in a career that began with the Smiths in the early '80s, Morrissey nonetheless commands a fanatical following that came out in force over the weekend for sold-out concerts at the Aragon and Riviera as part of his first North American tour since 1991.

Delirious screams greeted his arrival, and flowers showered the stage of the Aragon; Morrissey responded by flapping his right hand as though trying to shake loose a squashed insect. He whipped his microphone cord like a lariat and immediately peered into the void that his characters call everyday life: "The gulf between all the things I need/And the things I receive/Is an ancient ocean wide.''

Backed by a four-piece band that alternated brutish rock with shimmering atmospherics, particularly on the lushly orchestrated "Ambitious Outsiders,'' the jut-jawed singer gestured extravagantly, as though parodying a fulsome lounge crooner. Yet there was an undercurrent of violence, as Morrissey lovingly examined his floral gifts, then suddenly grabbed a handful and hurled them back into the audience, petals flying.

The backdrop for the stage was a large photographic image of two androgynous youths, like a snapshot of innocence before it is defiled. And as the quintessential pop martyr, Morrissey is a fantasy soulmate for many in his audience.

But there's more going on than mere self-pity in the singer's music. It is also riddled with droll, self-deprecating humor. "It's my life/To ruin/My own way,'' he declared on the anthemic "Alma Matters.''

Morrissey and his co-writers, guitarists Martin Boorer and Alain Whyte, delivered thumping pop tunes, and the singer's aching tenor squeezed every drop of melodrama from them. But their songs are no match for those of Morrissey's former group, the Smiths. Only on this tour has Morrissey finally begun to perform some of the Smiths material, and he closed his show with the outsider anthem "Shoplifters of the World Unite.''

After only 13 songs and an hour on stage, Morrissey, complaining of the flu, was gone. Fans who spent $25 may have felt it was a small price to pay for a glimpse--for that was all it was--of their hero. And perhaps "Speedway'' was a message to these undiscriminating die-hards from their guru of gloom: "I've always been true to you/In my own sick way.''

Copyright Chicago Tribune (c) 1997
Document ID: dc092963