S
stinky
Guest
Revered tunesmith happy to rest on his laurels;Lynsey Hanley reviews Morrissey at MEN Arena, Manchester:
Spending the past six years in Los Angeles seems to have aged Morrissey. Perhaps he has trouble writing songs about the place.
Looking not a day over 50, Manchester's prodigal son elected to spend his 45th birthday in the company of 20,000 well-wishers in the city that has provided him with more than 20 years of astonishingly fecund lyrical inspiration.
With a single in the top three and a public profile that's rarely been so high or so positive, the former Smiths singer had plenty to live up to, and seemed painfully aware of the fact. As befits a man who has written dozens of exquisitely phrased songs bemoaning the yawning gap between expectation and reality, he had the look of someone whose balloon had just popped because he couldn't stop blowing it up.
"Regrets, I've had a few…too many to mention," crooned the greying cove, screwing his eyes up in awkward mirth and ripping into The First of the Gang To Die from the new album. He moved little, where once he would have thrown himself about the stage as if he was trying to shake off a wasp. The palpable static that filled the air before his appearance dissipated along with whatever it was that was holding up his quiff.
Of course, many were too rapt to notice. There's always been something unsettling about the extreme bouts of homosocial bonding that take place at Morrissey gigs, from the heroic attempts of young men to leap onstage to bear-hug their hero, to the fact that the front third of the audience melts into one giant lump of swaying man-dom as soon as he opens his mouth.
But once the initial excitement wore off - along with the novelty of hearing several Smiths songs, including a brutally funky Headmaster Ritual - what was left was an ageing man who looked content to soak up the adulation without giving an awful lot back.
The single Irish Blood, English Heart was stirring enough, but the undisguised boredom with which his bear-hugging disciples greeted the mid-tempo dirges that make up the rest of the album was disturbing to behold. The rest of us were barely even awake.
What began as a traditional mid-set lull opened up into a chasm of tedium that threatened to swallow up the whole arena. The irony of choosing another Smiths song, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, for the encore, was doubled. Perhaps the light finally has gone out.
Spending the past six years in Los Angeles seems to have aged Morrissey. Perhaps he has trouble writing songs about the place.
Looking not a day over 50, Manchester's prodigal son elected to spend his 45th birthday in the company of 20,000 well-wishers in the city that has provided him with more than 20 years of astonishingly fecund lyrical inspiration.
With a single in the top three and a public profile that's rarely been so high or so positive, the former Smiths singer had plenty to live up to, and seemed painfully aware of the fact. As befits a man who has written dozens of exquisitely phrased songs bemoaning the yawning gap between expectation and reality, he had the look of someone whose balloon had just popped because he couldn't stop blowing it up.
"Regrets, I've had a few…too many to mention," crooned the greying cove, screwing his eyes up in awkward mirth and ripping into The First of the Gang To Die from the new album. He moved little, where once he would have thrown himself about the stage as if he was trying to shake off a wasp. The palpable static that filled the air before his appearance dissipated along with whatever it was that was holding up his quiff.
Of course, many were too rapt to notice. There's always been something unsettling about the extreme bouts of homosocial bonding that take place at Morrissey gigs, from the heroic attempts of young men to leap onstage to bear-hug their hero, to the fact that the front third of the audience melts into one giant lump of swaying man-dom as soon as he opens his mouth.
But once the initial excitement wore off - along with the novelty of hearing several Smiths songs, including a brutally funky Headmaster Ritual - what was left was an ageing man who looked content to soak up the adulation without giving an awful lot back.
The single Irish Blood, English Heart was stirring enough, but the undisguised boredom with which his bear-hugging disciples greeted the mid-tempo dirges that make up the rest of the album was disturbing to behold. The rest of us were barely even awake.
What began as a traditional mid-set lull opened up into a chasm of tedium that threatened to swallow up the whole arena. The irony of choosing another Smiths song, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, for the encore, was doubled. Perhaps the light finally has gone out.