English version
Christmas is early. Under the cactus, a "best-of" of thorny warnings against the vices of our congeners, against the recurring evils of our society, a concentrate of a pessimistic vision of our world heckled, a pamphlet where sex, the oil and rock n'roll are summoned. A Morrissey album is always an event. Sometimes it's a disappointment, often it can also find its account, it is largely the case today and I will try to explain why. The site Suississimo began to exist thanks to the singer of the Smiths who granted us several times an interview in writing. It is therefore natural that we will continue to follow the work of one of the best songwriters of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The album is entitled "Low in High School". With this label, Morrissey is not in the novelty, education ("The Headmaster Ritual", "Stairecase at the University" ...) is one of the recurring themes used by the singer. The album contains 12 titles and could end up alone under the tree, lack of gift packages enough complacent to keep him company. In "Low in High School", Morrissey takes out the knives and wags in the wounds of our world with nonchalance, the theme of the exit, the exclusion, the jealousy, the domination of the powerful ones, the homesickness, the racism, the big mouths fallen during the recent revolutions ... So nothing new for the Moz under the sun of Mexico? No, on the contrary, the singer projects his desires of music with a choice of well felt productions and a selection of punchlines which do not take care of or spare any gravedigger of our year 2017. There is dissent in the pieces of « Low in High School ", a desire to finish with the pop format.
We hear it, and it's new, Morrissey dares to stand out from what is expected of him, even to rush some texts yet successful by placing them on mediocre musical compositions. Politically, he takes the liberty of bashing basic anti-Zionism - and there is no mention of anti-Semitism there, but of the desire of some Jews to find a land where ancestors lived from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. He does not care enough about potential recriminations that may come from the pro-Palestinian community that neither understands nor accepts Israel's domination, helped by the United States in Gaza or the occupied West Bank territories. It is a desired Israel that is described by a particularly sliced Morrissey.
We can not help but see in the discography of the singer an attraction for geopolitics that was lacking the first years of his solo career. The turn took place with "You Are The Quarry", and the song "America Is Not The World". In his latest album, the singer based in Switzerland, gives us a very personal geopolitics course, left or rather outside the classic spectrum of political game. The refusal of the elites however places more on the side of Mélenchon and his "dégagisme" affirmed or Bernie Sanders, the last two leaders to have animated in France or the United States the fronde widely anti-Wall Street, anti-establishment when presidential elections of both countries. But the sympathies displayed by the Mancunian for the UKIP party are precisely about provoking a debate about what the anti-royalist artist has become on the bottom, a former labor activist attracted by the gilding of showbiz, roughly a paradox traveling 1 meter 80 and annoying by throwing disorder on the people of the left who supported him until today. Through his statements, the socially open man he was at the time of the Smiths, has radically closed. Some will speak of bitterness, others of derailment. I personally think it's a temptation to provoke that has never been so strong.
Musically Since Morrissey unleashed the lasso of his musicians, his two musicians Gustavo Manzur and Mando Lopez Hispanic, Hispanic footsteps are more numerous. Yet "Low in High School" casts a pale light onto the digital walkman, with all-powerful riffs, echoing songs from "Your Arsenal" as "Glamorous Glue" or the stormy riffs of "Southpaw Grammar" or of "Years Of Refusal". Morrissey throws his energy into a rock and melodious deluge from the outset as if to mark his territory. The rabid doberman is hungry to say and describe, accentuating with the help of Joe Chiccarelli the instrumental nuances and vocal flashes alternately on this imperfect but interesting album for this reason. Morrissey has never been a regular artist in his solo career but it is clear that "Low in High School" is among the top 5 albums for me, the ranking is as follows (1) Your Arsenal, (2) Ringleader of the Tormentors, (3) Vauxhall & I, (4) Low in High School, (5) Viva Hate.
"My Love, I'do Anything For You" 4/5 : an entry in the subject marked by strident pachydermic humanoid trumpets, we applaud all four paws. Morrissey walks on this trumpet hymn proudly placed in the front row. Good material. The sound of this album debuts the role of musical director Boz Boorer and producer Joe Chiccarelli in the center of operations, we enjoy the fusion of pop and rock genres in what is more classic.The sound effects of the production bring this shift that we will find several times on the album. The two chief sound designers designated for the last two albums "World Peace is None of Your Business" and "Low in High School" release the horses with guitars in the form of knight spears, inflamed, brilliantly worked. We find the Morrissey bravache of the 2000s with the albums "You are the Quarry" or "Ringleader of the Tormentors", a kind of confidence in the fight, a morgue, an anticipation to satisfy the nostalgic of a Moz to the word released and liberal, who rather turned eurosceptic and nationalist (see his amazing references at a concert for BBC 6 Music in Maida Vale).
"I Wish You Lonely" 3/5: rather repetitive piece. Morrissey sinks into the ease of a ritournelle already seen. It is a regret to see the author place this composition as early in the arrangement but not serious. The haunting side of the song "I Wish You Lonely" reinforces the narrator's fatigue effect of a global socio-political environment that has not changed for years, for centuries. Guitars well forward, groans following the chorus.Morrissey just "trasher" the idiots who gave their life ... the finger on the seam of the pants. Martial, enraged will not calm down throughout his twelve songs. That's what was expected of him.
"Jacky's Only Happy When She's Up On The Stage" 3/5: An introduction reminiscent of the "Father Who Must Be Killed" intro. Everyone is going to the exit repeats the singer at the end of the song, obvious reference to Brexit? Without a doubt.Venezuelans leaving their country in ruins economically. But who is this lady only happy once on stage? A feminine avatar of Morrissey? Maybe or not, it's not the most important. This second single that already invades social networks with this clip with lyrics scrolls this question: is there still in Morrissey wishes to keep a place in the Hall of Fame British pop authors orchestrated 1990/2000 in the manner Manic Street Preachers or Elbow? We are seriously asking ourselves the question. Besides the anachronism of the proposal with this single, it is for me not the best bill of Morrissey in this eleventh album. We leave with a mixed feeling. Special mention to the voices of children compiled in outro, an artifice already tried on "The Youngest Was the Most Loved" ten years ago.
"Home is a Question Mark" 5/5: "My house is a question mark, a place I have not been able to keep ..." sings Morrissey. An autobiographical question, no doubt when we know the ease of the gentleman not to stay too long in the same place since he started a solo career (USA, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland are some of the country where he lives outside England). A song full and generous, pictured with humor ... "put your legs around my head to greet me if I ever get to ask me," he concludes. I salute the very successful production to serve such clever words in metaphor and irony, with jingle bells of an imaginary Santa Claus in recurring jingle.