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"Morrissey
Low In High School
Another year in hell for the bilious hermit of indie rock.
Times are ripe for the old personal/political juxtaposition caper, but ethnic cleansing and oral sex? Young lovers and nuclear incineration? “My Love, I’d Do Anything” bookended with screams from a torture chamber? Oh, Mr Morrissey! The British indie king-in-exile continues his misanthropic streak on his umpteenth uncompromising denunciation of the brutal idiocy of humankind. “Society’s hell,” he declares for openers, as thumping drums, clanging guitars and horns of war assemble in a world of propaganda and occupation.
“Who Will Protect Us From the Police” is typical of his contempt for uniform of all stripes, but the epic centrepiece “I Bury the Living” is next-level vitriol. Sung from the hapless viewpoint of “a sweet little soldier (gimme an order and I’ll blow up your daughter)“, its thrashing refrain of “honour mad canon fodder” is unlikely to garner many RSL invitations.
There’s trademark tragicomic self-pity, too, between the Christmas bells of “Home Is a Question Mark” and the dancing electric piano of “Spent the Day In Bed”. The classic Mozzer trope of withering from sexual neglect reaches a new pitch of terror in the stampeding finale of “Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up On the Stage”.
Steel your nerves for the last simmering storm of inhuman oppression in “Israel”, but fan or foe, don’t expect to be sitting on the fence when the last battlefield vista unfolds.
MICHAEL DWYER"
http://rollingstoneaus.com/reviews/post/morrissey-low-in-high-school/7448
Low In High School
Another year in hell for the bilious hermit of indie rock.
Times are ripe for the old personal/political juxtaposition caper, but ethnic cleansing and oral sex? Young lovers and nuclear incineration? “My Love, I’d Do Anything” bookended with screams from a torture chamber? Oh, Mr Morrissey! The British indie king-in-exile continues his misanthropic streak on his umpteenth uncompromising denunciation of the brutal idiocy of humankind. “Society’s hell,” he declares for openers, as thumping drums, clanging guitars and horns of war assemble in a world of propaganda and occupation.
“Who Will Protect Us From the Police” is typical of his contempt for uniform of all stripes, but the epic centrepiece “I Bury the Living” is next-level vitriol. Sung from the hapless viewpoint of “a sweet little soldier (gimme an order and I’ll blow up your daughter)“, its thrashing refrain of “honour mad canon fodder” is unlikely to garner many RSL invitations.
There’s trademark tragicomic self-pity, too, between the Christmas bells of “Home Is a Question Mark” and the dancing electric piano of “Spent the Day In Bed”. The classic Mozzer trope of withering from sexual neglect reaches a new pitch of terror in the stampeding finale of “Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up On the Stage”.
Steel your nerves for the last simmering storm of inhuman oppression in “Israel”, but fan or foe, don’t expect to be sitting on the fence when the last battlefield vista unfolds.
MICHAEL DWYER"
http://rollingstoneaus.com/reviews/post/morrissey-low-in-high-school/7448
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