Oh, yes, let’s all take a shit on Maladjusted. Again.
Yes, yes, yes, I know, I know: you don’t like Maladjusted. You think it’s the worst Morrissey album, worse than Kill Uncle even; you think it’s dour, that it has no wit, that the sound is swampy and that it killed Christ.
I like Maladjusted. Top three, maybe top on good days. “He Cried” I think is excellent: “People where I come from/they survive without feelings, or blood” – the pun “stoned to death” condenses, elegantly, the entirety of Morrissey’s (very strong) latter anti-antidepressant track “Something Is Squeezing My Skull.” “Roy’s Keen?” Disappointed that he’s pulled it from the reissue. “Roy’s Keen” is incredibly funny. The conceit of the song is that Morrissey and Roy Keane are rival window cleaners and Roy Keane is great at it; he charms the hell out of everybody; he can clean windows and “hold a smile for as long as you require/even longer!” while he does it – Morrissey, conversely, is a completely shit window cleaner, alas. It’s light-touching and ridiculous, which is the only effective way to write about one’s envy of the effortless, or any heavy, nasty topic like that. Maladjusted in general is characterized by a self-aware warmth, which casts an even shadow over grimness and good cheer alike.
“Maladjusted” itself is brilliant, a glib trudge through a surreal swamp of words, images and sounds; “On this glorious occasion of the splendid defeat!” Anthony Newley proclaims, and then Morrissey says, “I wanna start from before the beginning!” and tears into a fragmented autobiographical ramble that seems to lurch drunkenly from side to side like a ship in a storm. If I mix-metaphor this description to death, it’s only because Maladjusted is also visual in a way that Morrissey albums aren’t usually; for one thing it has actual imagery, and for another the arrangements are heavily evocative of the same things I mention: storms, swamps, prisons, things like that.
If we are going to talk about Morrissey albums we do not like, then I will talk to you about You Are The Quarry, Kill Uncle and most of what’s collected on Bona Drag; these are records whose arrangements I find cheap and uninspired, and whose lyrics I feel are not Morrissey at his most interesting. It’s almost meaningless to really criticize one of his albums, though, as he’s trying to do something so specific that he’s not even really participating in the ordinary critical conversation. And thank God for that. A reasonable scale has never been discovered for measuring whatever he does. Nonetheless, these are not my favorites.
But Maladjusted has a suppleness and a damp uniqueness of vocal tone which should place it among his most highly-regarded records and yet, instead, it seems consistently either derided or ignored. Its recent (upcoming?) re-release will doubtless bring on a new little wave of criticism, the first touches of which I have just read, and this will be annoying.
I would never call it a perfect record. “Satan Rejected My Soul” strikes a false note, maybe, and “Sorrow Will Come In The End” may or may not be art (if it is, it’s good art, but I suspect it’s not). But there is enough good in “Ammunition” alone, with its hyperextended metaphor and series of pleasant, conflicting, clear statements about killing yourself and/or outgrowing the idea of killing yourself, to save it from the pit it’s been flung into, and “Ammunition” is not by far the best thing it has.
Trouble loves me,
Seeks and finds me
To charlatanize me, which is only…
…As it should be…
Oh, please fulfill me; otherwise kill me; show me a barrel and watch me scrape it!
Cover stars, ready to explore the stratosphere.
I love Morrissey’s design sense when he isn’t putting records on his dick. Entirely responsible for the Smiths’ LP and single covers, and still heavily involved now that the world is slicker, he has played violins, hefted guns and babies, burped and lain on railroad tracks for Art. He is also the world champion in pairs publicity shots. There is a poster of him, Marr and some daffodils which still strikes me as dangerous (not because it’s “homoerotic,” whatever that means, but because it’s a professionals’ marriage portrait), and the 2006 image of Kristeen Young displayed on his shoulders in saddle shoes is an lovably queasy evocation of Lolita, let down only by the camera’s catching everyone’s faces at a slightly inopportune moment.
But this post is primarily about those Smiths sleeves -vintage advertisements, film stills and newspaper photographs- and particularly the odd moment that recurs whenever you see something that clearly fits among them – like the image of Wiley Post in an early pressure suit (below), which I found on Boing Boing the other day. The strange business (a camera?) at crotch level, the wrapped and protected body, the caption, the sense that the context has died with the years – it could fit between “Hand In Glove” (Jim French photo of bare-assed fellow) and “This Charming Man” (Jean Marais as a Narcissus-like Orpheus, asleep by a mirroring pond – an image Young briefly glances toward in her gorgeous sleeve for Music For Strippers, Hookers and the Odd On-Looker).
The Smiths’ visuals were incredibly important in teaching me to recognize the melancholy of low camp. I know that many of them come from “high” sources, but the fact that they mix art films with Seventies soap operas is itself as camp as camp can get. It’s about the sadness of things that lack context; you can find out the source of the still, and quite often the reference is interesting, but the initial strike is all about the total isolation of the image.
That big Irish face
There’s a breathtaking Morrissey impersonator who lives up in Portland. His resemblance is extraordinary, and he replicates the exact physical presence, movements, style of dress; his quiff is either graying in the same pattern or, perhaps -and I’d prefer this- he has it professionally grayed.
He doesn’t perform conventionally, so far as I know. His artform is coming to shows in character. I’ve seen him previously, but it was at a Morrissey concert, where nobody was fooled, for obvious reasons. I knew from gossip that I might see him again in this area, but when I did, at Glasvegas, it was eerie and somewhat terrifying. Because, honestly, how do you know? Are you making a fool of yourself by nodding wisely, saying after all that the real Morrissey would never half-hug a stranger like that as she leaned in to talk to him, or that the real Morrissey doesn’t pee?
(Actually, I know he pees. I’ve seen him run offstage after saying so, though, yes, if we’re going to get down to it, I didn’t actually witness the act. I think he’s saving the onstage whizz for a special occasion.)
Anyway, it didn’t help that the real Carl Barat was wandering around too, looking sad and clear-skinned after his opening set, and occasionally signing an autograph. A troupe of young British women were at the show, delighted with the nearness afforded by his American obscurity. I admired them.
The Years of Refusal sleeve
It seems to bother a lot of his fans, but a lot of things do, and I’m not sure I read a big enough sample.
I think its only real offense is a general lack of years – both in the slick facemask he’s been given via Photoshop, and the eye-misleading positioning of the title.
But it seems in keeping with the post-Maladjusted sleeve theme: highly stylized poses, inexplicable props, vintage fonts – all of it not entirely coming off, but it costs you nothing to be generous to the possibility that this sleeve isn’t meant to come off. I think that’s what the past three have aimed for. They’re trying to strike an uncomfortable, does-he-mean-this balance between agonizing high camp and genuine star quality, like “First of the Gang to Die.”
Granted, only Ringleader of the Tormentors, with its implicitly shouted title and slathering of very, very almost-convincing faux-very-high-class-indeed patina, actually got there for me:
Say what you want. I think that’s a beautiful goddamn piece of design.
But Years of Refusal isn’t bad either, despite the Photoshop and a certain weirdness around the proportions and cropping which I assume is not part of the point. I like the blankness of what’s left of Morrissey’s expression, and the way it contrasts with the extremely personable baby.
Look at that baby. That’s a sassy baby. I think he’s saying, “you should get to know your town, just like I know mine.”
