Your Favourite Morrissey Album

[Si Hunt]

I'm going through a spell of listening to Mozza at the moment, and I just wondered what the opinion was on all his albums.

Which is your favourite?

Also, which is your least favourite?

Si.

[Anthony Williams]

I voted for You Are The Quarry, because it's the only one that I've heard in it's entirity!

Ant x

[Rob McCow]

Vauxhall & I, I reckons, with Morrisey... You Are The Quarry as a close second. Vauxhall wins it for Speedway, which is fantastic and there's some other good singles on there. To be fair though, Morrisey... You Are The Quarry probably has stronger 'album' tracks.

[Si Hunt]

I can't believe that after "Viva Hate" he released FIVE non-album singles! "Picadilly Pallare", "November Spawned a Monster", "Ouija Board"... none of them are on albums!

Si.

[Perry Vale]

Southpaw Grammar for me, by the proverbial country mile.

Bona Drag should be seperate, shouldn't it?

[Si Hunt]

I don't know, it's just the debut plus b-sides and isolated singles so I figured I'd lump it in.

Si.

[SiHart]

Vauxhall and I for me too, although I tend to avoid him these days.

Si xx

[Pip Madeley]

Viva Hate/Bona Drag for me - Everyday Is Like Sunday, Suedehead, Interesting Drug, November Spawned a Monster, Ouija Board, Ouija Board... love em.

[Dave Lewis]

Ah, Morrissey. I could write a vast guide to his albums in order of merit, but I don't really have to... because I already have, in June 2003...


1. Vauxhall And I

Morrissey's greatest moment as a solo artist, and comparable with the very best of the Smiths output. From the opening bars of Now My Heart Is Full to the chainsaw guitars of the closing Speedway, this is an album of almost uniform quality. The fanfare single, The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get still sounds fresh and exciting nearly a decade later, while Why Do You Find Out For Yourself, Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning and Hold Onto Your Friends are marvellous, melancholic, and moving. Billy Budd, a song blatantly about Morrissey's relationship with Johnny Marr, sounds like the Marr of The Queen Is Dead-era Smiths, a two and a bit minute rocker of supreme wonderfulness. If you are going to buy just one Morrissey album, don't just buy this one, get Bona Drag too. But if you can't find that, get this. It's his one true classic.

2. Bona Drag

Although there are numerous Morrissey compilations on the market, the curious would be far better served by ignoring all the Best Of's and buying this, if he or she can find it. Released in lieu of an aborted second album, Bona Drag contains all his singles from Suedehead to Piccadilly Palare, with some of his best b-sides (the appearance of the abysmal Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference is an inexplicable lapse in taste and the only crap song on offer) from the immediate post-Smiths era, when his creativity, as far as singles went, was at an all-time high.

3.Viva Hate

Morrissey's debut solo album, and while only occcasionally does it aspire to the great heights reached by the Smiths, there are some fantastic tunes on here. The singles Suedehead and Everyday Is Like Sunday, both top ten hits and deservedly so, can hold their heads high with the illustrious band their singer was in a year earlier. The glorious melodrama of Angel Angel Down We Go Together, Late Night Maudin Street and Margaret On The Guillotine (A Thatcher baiting ballad that ends with the sound of the Iron Lady being decapitated) are indicative that Morrissey certainly hadn't lost his touch. There is filler on here - Dial A Cliche and Alsatian Cousin do nothing for me, and Bengali In Platforms is tuneful, but lyrically atrocious. It is impossible to defend the line "Life is hard enough when you belong here" in the context it is used here. Allegations of racism were to dog Morrissey again and again, and it came to the fore here. A blemish on an otherwise excellent debut.

4.Your Arsenal

A new sound and some new co-writers bring an album of, in the main, extremely high quality. Glamorous Glue, Tomorrow, and You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side are some of Morrissey's best rock songs - Tomorrow's lyrics are a personal favourite: "Tell me that you love me... oh, I know you don't mean it". There is also a great Smithsian ballad called Seasick Yet Still Docked - proud, bitter, and heartbroken... utterly marvellous.
But... and there is a grave but about the Morrissey of this era, and that was the disturbing wave of nationalism that pervades it. Deliberately couched in ambiguity (for the first time, there was no lyric sheet with this album), it is difficult to understand the true thinking behind The National Front Disco (unless it is to ridicule the thought of the NF holding "discos") and the football hooligans' lament We'll Let You Know - "We are the last truly British people you will ever know". No they aren't, and Morrissey, that most unfootballing of persons, looks a twat for saying it. It is left to the listener to make their own mind up as to Morrissey's reasoning and intent with these songs, but it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. If you can stomach these two songs, the album is well worth a listen because pretty much all of the rest of it is a huge return to form.

5.Maladjusted

Something of a return to form after the dismal Southpaw Grammar, this was Morrissey's most recent album, and six years on, it still has much to recommend about it. However, it certainly doesn't compare with his best work - at best its good, and at worst its not shit. Which is an improvement on what went before, at least. The singles Alma Matters and Satan Rejected My Soul are the high points musically - excellent jangly pop songs that bounce along jauntily. Lyrically, the title song's depiction of a young prostitute is poetic and stirring: "When the gulf between all the things I need and the things I receive is an ancient ocean wide - wild, lost, uncrossed". There is filler here, inevitably - He Cried and Ambitious Outsiders are bland and dubious respectively, while the only good thing about Roy's Keen is the punning title. Also, it could be argued that the best lyrics and the best music have been kept seperate on this album to give a kind of uniform level of quality, rather than have some very high points and very low points.

6. You Are The Quarry

Some good singles, particularly First Of The Gang To Die, quite possibly Morrissey's best single since The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get a decade earlier. However, this album is one that's been on the shelf almost without movement since I bought it, which probably says more about me than it does about Morrissey. However, I have listened to it more often than...

7. Ringleader Of The Tormentors

...which I have, to my shame, only listened to twice since buying it in a deluxe poster bag CD/DVD edition last year. If I recall correctly, it has a great opening tune, I Will See You In Far Off Places, a couple of Oasis-sounding rockers, and a great Morricone-scored song but I can't remember which one it is. I lament my failure to listen to recent Moz material when only this morning I listened to The Boy With The Thorn In His Side whilst doing my hair. I'm a saddo who dwells in the past, really.

8. Beethoven Was Deaf

"I still cannot speak French... I am very... lazzzzzzzyyyyy...."

A great live album, from a tour where I saw Moz for free - FREE! - at Alexandra Palace. The performances are good, particularly on the then recent Your Arsenal tunes (of which there are a plethora), and Moz gives the occasional bit of waspish between-song banter. But live albums are generally a poor substitute for the real deal of actually being there, and Beethoven Was Deaf is no exception. The head of the Expressive Arts department at my school saw the name of this album felt-tipped onto my school bag, and said (amongst many, many other notably ridiculous or pointless statements) "Beethoven Was Deaf? Well he was, you know." Almost up there with another teacher in the same department, who referred to a 1992 Morrissey single as "I Love You, Fatty".

9. Southpaw Grammar

Eight tracks, of which only one can be said to be any good at all - the vaguely witty single Dagenham Dave. While hardly a classic, compared to the other dismal offerings, it is certainly listenable. The rest is not; the appallingly overlong The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils is supposed to be indicative of the change since Morrissey's schooldays, as detailed graphically in the Smiths' The Headmaster Ritual. Instead it is trite and meaningless. The Boy Racer is bitchy filler, Southpaw is one long droning mess, while the rest are utterly forgettable. This album, and the contemporaneus The Boxers EP represent a career low.

10. Live At Earl's Court

I've never heard it, but it can't be any worse than...

11. Kill Uncle

A truly awful album that can be fleeced for two vaguely good songs: Mute Witness, an uptempo Madness-esque stomper, and Driving Your Girlfriend Home, an inoffensive country ballad with lyrics so banal there's almost sinister undertone to them. The rest of the tunes are, sadly, atrocious. Appallingly over produced by Madness cohorts Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, the echoey, bass-heavy sound of Our Frank, Found Found Found, and There Is A Place In Hell For Me and My Friends manages to make shit songs into very shit songs. The truly vile and patronising lyrics of Asian Rut are an all-time low for Morrissey. If you're thinking of buying this album, don't bother.

[Perry Vale]

I don't know, it's just the debut plus b-sides and isolated singles so I figured I'd lump it in.

Si.

It isn't. Bona Drag's 14 tracks feature only two from 'Viva Hate'. It's your poll though.

[Dave Lewis]

When I saw on the front page that Steve had posted on this thread, I thought he'd come to take me to task for not revising my opinion of Southpaw Grammar...

[Perry Vale]

When I saw on the front page that Steve had posted on this thread, I thought he'd come to take me to task for not revising my opinion of Southpaw Grammar...

Well, you've had four years to relisten to it now.....

On the subject, there was a a short interview with Tony Visconti in Music Week recently, where he stated that he hoped to be producing the next Morrissey album too, in the near future....

[Si Hunt]

New Morrissey album on the way for 2008...

Former Smiths legend Morrissey has announced plans to release a new album next September.

The 48-year-old singer, who opened his 10-day residency at the Hollywood Los Angeles Palladium on Monday, released his most recent album last year.

Speaking to the BBC News website he said: "The plan is to make a new album after this tour. It's absolutely written and completely ready."

He plans to record it in the US but insists it "won't be ready until 2008."

[Perry Vale]

I thought that was likely following his "I'm retiring" announcement recently.

[Perry Vale]

Bona Drag 20th Anniversary Reissue

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/201...sary-remaster/

With six unreleased tracks, plus a reissue of 'Everyday Is Like Sunday' as a single...

1. “Piccadilly Palare”
2. “Interesting Drug”
3. “November Spawned A Monster”
4. “Will Never Marry”
5. “Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference”
6. “The Last Of The Famous International Playboys”
7. “Ouija Board, Ouija Board”
8. “Hairdresser On Fire”
9. “Everyday Is Like Sunday”
10. “He Knows I’d Love To See Him”
11. “Yes, I Am Blind”
12. “Lucky Lisp”
13. “Suedehead”
14. “Disappointed”
15. “Happy Lovers At Last United” *
16. “Lifeguard On Duty” *
17. “Please Help The Cause Against Loneliness” (Demo) *
18. “Oh Phoney” *
19. “The Bed Took Fire” *
20. “Let The Right One Slip In” (Alternate Long Mix) *

[Perry Vale]

Well, out today, I think?

Listened to this last night via iilegal means, and very impressed. A really good mastering job (without ramping up the volume), and the six unreleased tracks are surprisingly good. I'm off to buy the cd officially now!

Absolutely terrible sleeve design, and horrible font though. Mozza really hasn't a clue in these things, has he?

[Awesome Wells]

I'm tempted to buy it for the 'new' songs. Surprised that 'Oh Phoney' made it but 'Striptease With A Difference' didn't.

Although, when I say I'm tempted, that doesn't mean I'll actually do it. When it comes to Morrissey, I'm not exactly prompt; Southpaw Grammar being a case in point.

Well, you've had four years to relisten to it now.....

I've had another three since then and I've STILL not done it...

[Perry Vale]

I've had another three since then and I've STILL not done it...

And even that's been reissued with extra tracks in that time!

[Si Hunt]

Funnily enough, I've been Mozzing it up lately, though that doesn't extend to buying "Bona Drag" again for a couple of extra demos.

I'd forgotton all about "Years of Refusal"! I've gone back and listened to it and I'm surprised Wiki claims it got good critical reviews. The bloody awful lisp thing on "Throwing My Arms Around Paris" still stands out and I'm amazed that "Something is Squeezing My Skull" was the second single - it's pretty terrible.

Si.

[Perry Vale]

I think their quality makes them worthier than being called 'demos', but fair enough. Funnily enough, I think the bonus tracks/demos on Southpaw, Maladjusted & Bona are better than anything on Years Of Refusal.

Having not listened to Bona Drag for possibly 20 years (as I always listen to the tracks on their respective singles), I was rather surprised to hear the added verse in 'Piccadilly Palare'!