Review Summary: Another high quality output from the veteran
Arriving delayed by 6 months after a dispute with his previous record label, Morrissey's new release has his legions of fans palpitating once more.
The album opens with the thundering drums and palm muted chords of Something Is Squeezing My Skull. Largely autobiographical, the track focuses on Morrissey’s reliance on anti depressants and sleeping pills. It ends on a plea to either a literal doctor or the metaphorical self reliance, with Morrissey yelping ‘Don’t give me anymore’.
The next track finds Morrissey back in his role as the spokesperson for the downtrodden. The Mama in Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed has been ‘persecuted’ by a litany of corrupted officials. All her life she has been hemmed in by ‘pigs in grey suits’, ‘uncivil servants’, ‘spare, priggish moneymen’ and ‘bailiffs with bad breath’. Hence her ghost is at large and she needs to be laid softly on the riverbed. It all ends with a rousing chorus, as the family in the song gathers round Mama, reassuring her that ‘life is nothing much to lose’ and that they will ‘be with you, join you’
Black Cloud follows and the ferocity of the album has yet to subdue. A vicious song about unrequited love, it seems a sense of pathetic fallacy now follows Morrissey in his inability to make the object of his desires his truly. ‘I can woo ya, I can amuse ya, but there is nothing I can do to make you mine’, Morrissey declares helplessly. The synths play in maliciously halfway during the track, before giving to the whining guitars once more.
The real gem of the album lies in the tender and heartbreaking I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris. Continuing his fascination with cityscapes, i.e. Rome, in Ringleader Of The Tormentors, Morrissey resigns himself to never getting the love of the one he craves, and decides to give all his attention to the ‘stone and steel’ of Paris. Cue all the imagery of a rain sodden Morrissey standing arms outstretched on a deserted night in Paris, with only a clarinet solo playing through his mind.
Having let his old tender self slip out, Morrissey is back to the new defiant him in All You Need Is Me. Exploring his love hate relationship with the press, his fans, and probably countless others around him, Morrissey plays the ‘voice’ that never goes away, who chides away at his listener despite their ‘hissing and moaning’. Ultimately, Morrissey reminds us, we will miss him when he’s gone.
Halfway stage sees the Spanish influenced When I Last Spoke To Carol. Grandiose and tragic, it concerns a sorrow trodden young girl whose love is not replicated. It all ends with black earth upon her casket, and the whooshing sounds of a sinister wind.
Sandwiching When I Last Spoke To Carol, Morrissey returns to the world weary self he was in All You Need Is Me. After 25 years of songs about unrequited love, Morrissey belatedly realises That’s How People Grow Up. Full of dark humour, Morrissey is reminded by someone on their ‘deathbed’ that ‘there are other sorrows in life’. Even twisting the romanticism of Smiths favourite There Is A Light That Never Goes Up, rather than dying heroically in a car crash, rather he ‘crashed and broke my spine’, leading him to surmise ‘there are worst things in life than never being someone’s sweetie’
Continuing the death and destruction imageries that have plagued this album and the previous, finally encapsulated in a title in One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell. Constantly paranoid, the opening verse has Morrissey warning ‘Always be careful’ and any abuse towards a loved one may result in your final hour with them. Unwittingly, Morrissey finds that ‘Goodbye will be farewell, and/you will never see the one you love again/And the smiling children, tell you that you smell’, leading him to nothing but conclude that he was a ‘savage beast’.
Carrying on a 22 year old fascination with birthdays and perhaps a vendetta that has also lived that long, It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore is a belated sequel to Unhappy Birthday from Strangeways, Here We Come. ‘It’s not your birthday anymore, there’s no need to be kind to you’ and an attack on ‘syrupy, sentimental things’ blends itself with an aggressive love making episode, ending with some of the most desperate yodelling Morrissey has committed to record.
Morrissey seems compelled with his legacy and his demise on this album and he combines them in You Were Good in Your Time. Like Rubber Ring, Morrissey evaluates his own worth to his fans in ‘You made me feel less alone, you made me feel not quite so’ while assuming his audience’s voice says ‘and we thank you’, before concluding in an all too apparent imagery of death, as his hand is gripped for last time before dying unaware.
Sorry Doesn’t Help sees Morrissey taking aim at insincere apologies, while factoring in his distrust of the legal system stemming from the Joyce courtcase ‘Like a QC, full of fake humility’. Likely to find a burgeoning following among those who had been let down by their partner and subsequently given short shrift with a quick sorry, indeed, the years will not be turned back.
Ending as he did Ringleader of the Tormentors, Morrissey gives a statement of his current life. Factoring yet more paranoia, ‘could this be an arm around my waist, well surely the hand contains a knife’, finally telling us that he is ‘OK’ by himself. The album ends sonically as it started, with frantic drumming and a beefy bassline.
So as the title of the album suggests, Years Of Refusal is Morrissey’s ‘boy hits back at the world’. For all the lovers who have led him on, all the press and media who have labelled and blackened him, all his inner demons, Morrissey rejects and refuses them all. With hints from Morrissey that he is near his final hour as an artist, the album is also heavily concerned with the final hurrah. The fascinating rock misfit that is Morrissey gives us another bit of essential listening.
