Review Summary: Hard to differentiate from silence.
I'll do somewhat of a live stream here - I'll comment as I listen to the album in it's entirety. I already regret signing up for this procedure, not because this album causes pain, but because it causes absolutely nothing. There is nothing stirred except for visions of walking around "small businesses", sitting on a chair and staring into space, flipping a coin, rolling dice, getting a boring haircut, eating buttered toast, sweeping a kitchen floor, reading a book about the history of picture frames, drinking Lipton hot tea without any accompanying act, cleaning my room, sleeping dreamlessly (or its equivalent - non-inspiring dreams), sharing a meal with somebody else, choosing to trim the fat off my steak, dying in a hospital somewhere in Oklahoma, being relatively small (and deciding not to protest, which is fateful), eschewing ecstasy due to historical causes, and "settling down" in some vinyl apartment. But, so they say, we are human. So, this is the extent of our destiny. In this way, the album broaches the long-avoided subject of the true implications of the Copernican Revolution. We are not the center, we are off to the side. Swept under some rug to cry. There is paradoxical brilliance in the album's conformity with reality. A apprehension of arbitrariness. Consider the name of the band itself, "The Smiths." This is itself, whether "intentional" or not, an appeal to the "common" man, at least in the United States, where it is in fact the most COMMON name! So there is, out of the box so to speak, a direct appeal to the symbol of the collective. Allow me to provide a dissertation for my previous statements.
"It's so easy to laugh It's so easy to hate It takes guts to be gentle and kind" - Morissey
^Gentle, "do not STIR." Appeal to some sort of extreme moderation.
"Long hair is an unpardonable offense which should be punishable by death." - Morissey
^Implying that one disturbing extreme must necessarily meet with another? Back to silence? Or is this doubly loud? Or, an effort to gently joke?
“Disappointment came to me, and booted me, and bruised and hurt me, but that's how people grow up.” - Morissey
^A brilliant paradox. We "grow" by "shrinking." But, careful.
"Henceforward learn the beliefs of mortals, giving ear to the deceptive ordering of my words." - Parmenides
“It was probably nothing but it felt like the world.” - Morissey
^A confirmation of my hypothesis regarding The Smiths?
By the preceding quotes we became acquainted with the sort of thought which gave rise to The Smiths' debut album. Boring. But boring is what makes it so "good." It's unwavering. There's no more magnitude to crests than to troughs. This album is intensely sub par in the sense that it is below the average in an underlying, fundamental sense of the word. Why should I become disturbed? Consider the following quotation by Morissey - “I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now.” The middle is more polite. This would appeal to a crowd of mortals, so it is "good." Would you disturb a crowd of people with deranged heavy metal? Not without REPERCUSSIONS. Perhaps concussions. This is peer review. So, in some sense, it is a true album. Lets quickly ascertain Jordan Peterson's views on truth - "...if it doesn't serve life it's not true." This album has been phenomenally instrumental in serving the lives of the common man, so it's a true album. This fabulous album doesn't attempt to disquiet.
