Ahoy.
I am the "author" of the review...I'm afraid I don't know what you're on about! That's meant to be read as if I were speaking in a jaunty tone of voice!
Sorry!
No harm no foul. Thought you might be someone I knew in a former life.
Thanks again for your truth. Here's mine ~
Part One ~
In a city this beautiful it would seem just downright rude not to offer sublimity. An affront to our auspicious surroundings, rain or no rain. In a drunken shithole like Glasgow we takes what we gets, but here the stakes (no offence) are higher:
In three score and ten concerts I've never seen Morrissey open with such an audacious choice of songs. 'Last Night I Dreamt..' and 'Sunday' are meant to be a mid-set peak aren't they, or even pre-encore set closers? But after the (frankly too bloody long) 'Imperfect List', which is as depressingly apt now as when it was written, Moz strides on looking thunderously suave in his tailored sports-luxe zip top and proceeds to lie down on the stage, nestling his head between the two kick drums with the St. Andrews cross on them, as Gustavo tinkles the intro. As a self-loathing Scotsman I could have done without the Scotch flag bit, but I was agape at the gall of beginning a show flat on your back with a bit of pianissimo while the crowd shower their love like Scouse plastic cups.
He soars through 'Last Night' with an immaculate precision that beggars belief. I'd been concerned in Manchester that his singing sounded a little raspy (understandably so) but tonight it was like a warm, and real, embrace that one hoped would never break. I don't know where he dredges this stuff up from, not sure I want to either, but it seems as vital and alive now, on this stage, as it must have when he first put the words to paper last century. As 'The story is old, I know, but it goes on..' glides gracefully through me it occurs that it's another one of those tried and true profundities which litter Morrissey's art like diamond dust ('Does the mind rule the body..', etc) It's a distillation of existential thought that J-PS would, surely, have given his left nut for. To write the line is good enough, but to send it out into the world with a vocal melody of such defiant yearning, poignancy and resigned acceptance is Top Trumps. Giving expression to the philosophical theory whilst simultaneoulsy rendering the emotional cost. He ends the song where he came in - flat on the floor, in a foetal pose. I don't blame him.
'Everyday Is Like Sunday' continues in (with?) the same vein of majisterial melancholy, and the glorious middle eight going into the crowd-crescendo-lights-up-sing-along-a-Sunday. A true National Anthem. But I'm thinking, this is only 2 songs in? This shouldn't be. But, for me, those 2 opening songs had the crowd slurping out of the man's stigamta for the remainder of the set. He won us over in 2 rounds, he had us by 'greased tea', and we went with him the rest of the way. Following into any ficht. That, I think, is the subtle difference between the Manchester and Edinbugh shows. I enjoyed both immensely, but Edinburgh was definitely the more special. It could simply be a question of percentages (bigger crowd, more idiots) but the Edinburgh crowd were more on-side than Manchester.
And Morrissey seemed to sense it, as he launched into 'Alma Matters' with an apparent mood of gleeful and charming defiance in the delivery. He almost seemed to skip around the stage, matching the dodging and weaving within the lyric of this underrated shining pop gem.
'I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris', as always, is greeted with a roar of approval that disarms me. Don't get me wrong, I love the wee guy, but it always surprises me how popular this song is when there are others on 'Refusal' that are far greater. Tonight, for some reason, it goes in a little deeper than normal. Maybe it's being alone in a handsome town, but the gentle poignancy and bittersweet rigour have me slightly moistening. Or maybe it's cos as he chides 'Yes, you've made yourself plain..' he yanks his luxe-zip-top shut all the way to the neck! (Don't worry, he loosened it again in the dark)
'You Have Killed Me' is, as always, a joy. Sounding slightly less menacing than last summer (although that may have been due to sound 'issues' - the sound generally tonight was pretty poor: too loud, or undefined and squelchy. Not ruinously so though. Ironically, Manchester seemed to me to have clearer sound with about triple the height of tonights speaker rack.) The song is still a winning amalgam of poperatic dramatics and puckish punkish exuberance.
Next - the true alchemy of pop: 'Shoplifters' crashes into life and I am transported, in a palpitating heartbeat, back to Glasgow Barrowland, Feb 1995, and the first time Morrissey played it, or any other Smiths song, as a solo artist. As a moment in life it beat birth, marriage and death, greeted with a roar of approval I've yet to hear the equal of, but, frankly, the man tonight is almost unrecognisable from that wintery night back West. Tonight he delivers it with such antoginistic abandonment that it is sacrely believable that there are youths in here who were just a twinkle in their father's 'Girlfiend In A Coma' 12-inch in '95. Moz was in a pretty bad way, in many ways, in '95. Some of us were thinking - how many more years could he muster?
17 years later, here some of us are thinking - why bother stopping? Particularly affecting is the 'heartless hand on my shoulder' crescendo; this section is played and sung with such an on-rush of unified and flowing perfection that it really does send shivers up my neck. Who knows what the words actually mean (I'm aware of all the theorys), essentially they may very well be poetical jibberish, but here he delivers them with such swift and silken conviction, the 'BORED before I even BEGAN' climax is rendered with such punchy veracity that I am brought to the point of tears. Happiness was never so sad, etc, and vice versa, etc...
'Fatty' is greeted as raucously as ANY Smiths song you'd care to name. I rarely ever look behind me at concerts (for fear of seeing some weeble shaped moron playing with his BetFred app or some other example of moron-ism) but as 'Fatty' leaps into life I do risk a glance and I see a classic moment - a forty-something couple front row centre of the Grand Circle leap to their feet and begin simultaneously Moz-dancing and singing the song directly to each other, faces inches apart. The couple are....pleasingly rotund. A Kodak moment (widescreen). Although slightly undercut by me looking back as Moz sings '..And I will stay' to see the fella bolting up the stairs towards the doors. Chocolates?
'Speedway' is the equal of last summer, although slightly less stark and stripped back as it was then, slightly more recognisable to the original version. It could still be said to be a sublime mix of Jacques Brel and Johnny Ramone, although last summer Jacques was on top; now Johnny's back in charge. Teasing, enticing, exploratory, celebratory and accusatory - at times almost as if Morrissey himself doesn't quite know where he's going to go with it. Tonight it seems to excite and amuse him.
The black heart of the set pulses on with 'Maladjusted'. This is manifestly the song as it was always destined to be - a dizzying spiral of stalking, seething, questing, loving menace. The dark epic intimacy of the song is fully realised. My favourite Morrissey line ever ('When the gulf between / All the things I need / And the things I receive / Is an ancient ocean wide / wild / lost /uncrossed ') is raised to it's rightful place; as he spits out each word the drums and lights underline their power. He pauses to look askance at the 'safe and stable' warm light above before spinning back into the blood red stage lighting, circling the stage, round and round until that eponymous finalé. As he repeats 'maladjuted...never to be trusted' I watch his face and truth is smeared over every inch. Gustavo seals the deal with the truest falsetto there ever was...
Saturday night's encore comes next and is greeted with similar screams. This delivers up one of my favourite moments from the night when, during the chorus, Morrissey folds to his knees on his vocal monitor and looks to the heavens beyond the gilded innards of the Usher Hall to implore 'Am I Still Ill?' Answer came there none.
'One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell' is a stay-er. It seems able to triumph in any location, something to do with that bass line and those propulsive drums. And the fact that Morrissey sings his words with absolute conviction.